Chapter 6

I had Angeles engaged in small talk for the remainder of the meal. I learned that he has two younger siblings, the oldest of which has no asset, and it was too soon to tell for his youngest sibling since she is just a baby. I told him he was lucky to have siblings since I always wished for any family of my own. He asked me what it was like being parentless, and I told him it wasn’t too fun, I had to share a room with three other girls my entire life.

“Well I don’t know what it's like to share a room with that many people, but if it makes you feel better, I had to share a room with my brother until I moved here.

I laughed, “You guys must have had a lot of fun.”

“Oh yeah we did!” Angeles smiled, flashing back to his childhood. He told me stories of the rebellious and mischievous things he and his brother did, but assured me that they got along only half of the time. He launched into a story of how he and his brother used to steal and hide food from the preserver under their Iets and would eat the sugary foods all night long. That’s when Angeles started sensing his asset because he would be able to warn his brother that their parents were about to enter the room to check on them before it even happened. I followed along, interested in how siblings worked.

“Angeles,” an irritated voice interrupted their conversation.

“Yes, Five?” Angeles asked without having to turn around to see who it was. Angeles looked just as irritated as the skinny, cowering boy who stood behind him. The boy wore a black t-shirt and black jeans, and under them, the wielders’ uniform head to toe blue bodysuit. Only his face showed his pale skin, the palest I had ever seen, except on the less fortunate. The boy slouched, and his face had a permanent frown on it. He was probably only a few years older than me, but he acted like he was eighty years old; his eyes drooped, his shoulders rolled in, his back was hunched, and he walked slowly.

“Aren’t we meeting for team training in five minutes?” he mumbled.

“Yeah, don’t worry I’ll be there. I’m never late.”

The boy, who Angeles called Five, shook his head and walked out of the commons, “Don’t you wish that was true,” he mumbled listlessly.

When Five was out of earshot, I asked, “What’s his deal?”

Angeles sighed, “A few months ago, our team suffered a tragedy and it affected him more than the rest of us.”

“Oh.”

“It can be so annoying though, you know? He mopes around all the time, only showing up for dinner and team training, and he has never asked for any help at all,” he said, still irritated, “He says he doesn’t need it, but he does! He is such a drag to the rest of us.”

“I’m sorry,” I responded, not being able to relate to his problem. However I did know the helplessness that Five felt. When I was a young teenager in the parentless wing, I myself, felt hopeless. For a few months, I had acted the same way. I had planned to be grumpy and sarcastic the rest of my life, but the nursers wouldn’t have it. They made me spend my evenings, the only time I was free, talking to a volunteer therapist until I decided to behave better. For me, the therapist did nothing, but taking away my free time did.

I understood the anger in Five and knew that to him, even getting out of bed was like scaling a mountain. Angeles couldn’t relate to him, but I could.

“Yeah thanks,” Angeles acknowledged my sympathy, “Well, I’ve got to get going. Team needs training, assets need greasing, you know, the usual chores.”

“I don’t know actually,” I interjected sassily, “I haven’t trained at all yet.”

This took Angeles aback. His comment wasn’t relatable to me. His mouth hung open as he rebounded from the blow.

“Well then, would you like to join us?” he offered.

“Yes! That would be great! I mean, if I’m allowed to.”

“Sure, they look up to me to lead them anyway, so I don’t think they’ll mind me bringing a plus one,” he winked, “They trust my judgement.”

I smiled, excitedly, “Alright then.” I looked down at my dress. I couldn’t train in this. “Uh, can I change real quick?”

“Sure, I’ll wait outside here for you to get back then I’ll show you the way to our training room. Just hurry though, I have a reputation to uphold.”

I quickly realized that Angeles was inflating how much his team relied on him. He painted the picture like they treat him with unwavering respect and trust him in anything he says or does, but in reality, they just acknowledged him as he walked into Training Room 1A with me five minutes late.

Five scowled at him from the corner of the room, probably upset that he was late again. The girl who lectured Angeles earlier, Briz, was wrapping some cloth around her fists when she gave us a head nod. The third wielder, a short girl, waved happily at him, “Hey Ange!” I recognized that she was the third wielder in the hallway last night.

“Hey,” he responded.

“You’re late again,” Briz said, still focusing on wrapping her fists.

“No I’m not, the party doesn’t start without me!” Angeles teased.

“Actually Ange, it starts at nineteen,” the short girl giggled, “You’re late.”

“Who’s that?” Briz continued interrogating him.

He looked at me, “This is Shae, she’s new and I asked her to train with us.”

Angeles and I smiled at each other.

“What did we agree on, Angeles? No strangers in team training, right?” Briz scolded.

“Well she’s not actually a stranger,” Angeles retorted.

Briz turned around, taking me in for the first time. “I don’t recognize her.”

“She’s the girl we saved last night,” Angeles informed his team,” In the hallway.”

“Yeah,” I chimed in, “Thanks for that guys.”

“Sure,” Briz responded kindly. She rolled her eyes, “Fine, she can train with us. Just today though.”

“Thank you!” Angeles and I exclaimed at the same time.

The short girl came up to me. She pulled off her hood and looked up at me. She had most of her reddish-brown bobbed hair pulled up in a tiny ponytail on the top of her head. “Hi Shae,” she said enthusiastically, “I’m Morna!”

“Hey, Morna.” I felt a little confused. The girl was obviously older than me, but she acted like she was years younger. Thankfully, the next thing Morna said explained my curiosity.

“I know sometimes I talk really fast and have an insane amount of energy, but that’s part of my asset. See, I have double the usual amount of life energy inside me, but I can distribute it to anyone!”

I didn’t understand what that meant, but I nodded, “Cool.”

“Alright, Morns,” Angeles laughed, “Sit your butt down.”

Morna laughed and did as she was told.

Angeles motioned for me to sit on the other side of him and I happily obliged. Maybe I can fit in somewhere.

Briz spoke up, addressing me, “You know Angeles, obviously, and you just met Morna. I’m Brisbane, but don’t call me that, instead call me Briz, and that’s, uh, Five,” she introduced, “but from now to the end of training we call each other by our codenames we use on missions. It’s nothing fancy, just numbers. Angeles is One, I am Two, Morna is Three, and Five, well, he’s Five.”

You didn’t have to be an expert on math to figure out that they had counted wrong. “What happened to Four?” It was meant as a joke, but silence followed. Five looked away painfully, and even Morna lowered her head solemnly to the ground.

“I told you people would ask, man,” Angeles told Five.

“I want to honor his number!” Five shouted back through gritted teeth. I had struck a sore spot. This must be the tragedy that Angeles mentioned. The one that turned Five into a gloomy shadow.

Briz answered my question, “He’s no longer with us.”

He’s dead. Five must’ve been really close to him because while his other three teammates mourned, he just shut down. Five is staring off into space right through me. His gray eyes, lifeless and sad.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I consol, trying to make up for the pain I unintentionally just caused.

“Hey babe, it's fine,” Angeles comforts, “The wound is just fresh that’s all. Okay, on with the training, we’re ten minutes late now.”

Morna cheers up a bit, “Yeah! With no help from you!” she teased.

Briz led the group through a warm-up of meditation to free their minds, and to allow them to focus on their assets. As I was clearing my thoughts, I thought that it was funny that Briz acted more like the leader Angeles told me that he was.

I cleared my head of all thoughts. I had never meditated before, but I followed Briz’s instructions:

Focus on your breathing.

Clear your mind of all thoughts.

Pretend your mind is a still bowl of water. Don’t disturb the peace.

Reach down and try to connect to your asset.

My mind was clear like glass and still like a statue. After what felt like a minute, I started to lose the feeling of my muscles. All of my focus was on the expandings and retractions of my lungs as I breathed in and out. I knew it wasn’t perfect, but the meditation felt so good to do. All the stress and anxiety from the truth about my life, moving into the Apex, and my broken promise all washed out of me, leaving me calm and for the first time, excited about what’s to come in my new life. I thought of Milton, Walker, and Ramiro and how grateful I was for them being willing to let me eat with them on my first day. I thought of Angeles, who despite coming off as a creep, really proved himself to be a good friend, my first friend up here even. Finally, I thought of Morna, Briz, and even Five. They accepted me into their private group, even if it was only for a day, and didn’t kick me out when I brought up a sore topic. For them, I was extremely grateful. Thank you, my mind whispered to the joyous place, hoping that the deity up there would feel my gratitude.

I sat for another minute, smiling at the warm light that filled my soul. Reach down and try to connect to your asset, Briz had instructed. I scanned my body for my asset, and when I got a trace, I reached into my mind and soul to try to communicate with it.

My ears exploded with noise. It started with the breathing of the four wielders around me growing increasingly loud, then I could hear their heartbeats, and eventually, feel the vibrations of Morna repositioning herself. I could hear every word of a whispered conversation between a couple in a hallway on the other side of the building. I could track the west elevator going down from floor twenty-two to twenty and the southeast elevator zooming up to floor fifteen. I could locate the gentle music in the background of a ballet performance thirty floors below me. I could hear the whizzing of a shaver in a barbershop. I could hear the bodily waste disposer flushing in a dormitory on the fourth floor. The range of my hearing exponentially grew, grew, grew, and grew until my mind was so plagued with noises that I couldn’t even think for myself. The noises were destroying my ear drums, setting fire to my mind. My brain was too slow to decipher the infinite sounds I intook. One sound came in, but before I could identify what it was, another sounded. Thousands of conversations faded in and out and talked over themselves. Millions of gallons of water ran through the pipings to arrive at their requested destinations. Hundreds of items dropped on different surfaces in one second. my mind was overwhelmed. I grimaced and forced myself to let go of everything. My body remained still, but my mind strained to exit the depths of the meditation. My mind greatly struggled, but eventually the noises ceased, and the quiet breathing of the five wielders in Training Room 1A resumed its usual rhythm.

As I pushed the last of the noises out of my whirring mind, I felt a tremor in the floor underneath where I sat. The waves of the floor’s movements went out in a complete circle from where I sat on the training room floor. At first, I thought that I was just feeling another random quake, like I always did, but opened my eyes in shock when I heard the terrified gasps of the people around me.

“What was that?” Briz exclaimed, my cool, collected version of myself being replaced by a worried and anxious one.

“I don’t know,” Angeles said, “I saw it coming, but I don’t know where it came from or how. It just… appeared.”

In the midst of their panic, the reality of what happened occurred to me. It was just as unbelievable that my parents were Others. Just as shocking as finding out I’m a wielder and just as scary as moving into the Apex. Did I cause the rumble? If I could hear and track sounds through vibrations in the floor and the ground, what stopped me from being able to create my own?

“We need to go alert Leader,” Briz said. Angeles and Morna agreed. Five looked like he could care less. Briz, Angeles, and Morna headed to the door, but I stopped them.

“Wait.” I absorbed the realization that I just experienced, then continued, “I think it was… me.”

Silence fell on the room like the sun setting during the evening. Even the lively voices that I got used to filling the commons started to fade as the last stragglers from dinner left the commons. Weights were still clanging with the metal bars, but there wasn’t any chattering like earlier that day. The hallways were cleared of people and keys were scraped into their locks as wielders entered their tiny dormitories for the night.

Briz’s eyes were wide, Angeles’s mouth opened slightly, Morna looked confusedly between her three teammates, but Five didn’t show any reaction. If he was surprised, it was masked by his unwavering frown from where he still sat on the floor. Nobody knew how to react, and we froze in silence for eternities upon eternities.

“So she causes earthquakes,” Morna finally piped up, “So what? It's not the most dangerous thing we’ve seen.” I swore she glared at Five, who shifted uncomfortably.

“But she doesn’t have control over it! It's her first day for the joyous place, how do we know she won’t kill us, or Lord forbid, anyone else in this city?” Briz retorted.

“Calm down Briz,” Angeles added, “That’s why we can help her, and who knows, she could help us. I think she’d make a great emissary. And hey, we can’t go back out until we find one.”

Briz considered this, “What makes you think so?”

“She told me that she can feel things underground.”

“Like track them?”

“I don’t know, Angeles scratched the back of his head. “Shae, babe, can you track things?” he asked me.

All eyes were on me, even Five disturbed his focused stare to curiously inquire at me. Morna said I was a danger, Briz said that I could kill people in Burke. Who was I? I didn’t know much about myself, but I did know that somehow, I had caused that tremor. I didn’t know if that made me dangerous, and the thought of being a danger to everybody around created a fear in me that overtook all my other senses. Focus, you were asked a question, I told myself. Even though everything about my asset was new to me, I realized that I could, indeed, track noises and vibrations underground.

“Yeah,” I admitted, feeling awkward from the tension, “I can.”

“See,” Angeles used that information as his argument, “Shae can help us.”

“She has no training. We’ve all trained since we were twelve! she’s, what, fifteen, and it’s her first day?”

They looked at me again, this was my moment. Did I want in on what could be the most rewarding experience of my life, or was I too much of a coward to try. I was scared to jump, but I remembered that fiery anger that I felt when I figured out my parents’ plan. This might be my only chance to end it.

“I’m seventeen, actually, and I’m a quick-learner,” I said, accepting their challenge.

Angeles smirked, proud of me, and even Briz admired my spirit.

Just then, a short bell chime played. This one wasn’t like any of the ones that I grew up hearing every other week. This noise came from the same instrument, but it was short and sweet, only lasting a few seconds.

“Well,” Briz flustered, “That was productive.” She turned and walked out of the door.

I looked to Angeles, who was waiting for me, “What was that?” I asked him.

“It’s twenty now,” he explained, “training rooms close at twenty.”

All five wielders walked out of the training room, and when the door shut, it clicked locked. No one was allowed back inside until the next day. Five stalked quickly out of sight, not saying anything to anyone.

“Hey, Shae,” Briz called as I headed into one of the twisting hallways, “Come back tomorrow, kay?” She then turned and raced Morna down the hall.

I was honored by the invitation and excited to be wanted somewhere. I started to head back to my room, pleased from the outcome of my first day at Apex. I was surprised how easy it was to meet people and make friends. For the first time in my life, I found people that I could relate to, even if it was small, and with that feeling, I knew that it was my destiny to belong here at Apex.

“Hey babe!” Angeles called after me, “Where are you going? The commons aren’t closed yet!”

I smiled and turned around, skipping a little. The best day of my life just got better.