2.27.1

To Risk Resistance

Where her fellow Channelers saw lights and music, Astrid saw explosions. And the draining of organisms the children didn’t recognize to be their true targets.

The Channeler walked, mortified into submission, back to the main hall with the others of her kind.

They were instructed to prepare for lights out, and sleeping rolls and blankets were distributed with no real care.

The Channelers chittered away as though at a summer camp. As if the evening’s activities overwhelmed any memory of the brutal tactics wrought to bring them there.

Some, Astrid realized, may even believe the Statics rescued them into a new life. A useful one.

The quietest of the Channelers, the most traumatized, Astrid surmised, recalled exactly the manner in which they were collected.

Groups huddled up in haphazard sleeping arrangements. On benches, tables, and the floor.

But while groups gathered, Astrid, numb, directed Maya, Finn, Menloh, Ivy, and Jeremy to the back.

Menloh looked most reluctant, as he explained he typically took position by the doors, between the others and the Statics that imprisoned them. Astrid understood, and would have even agreed, but needed to talk to them, away from the windows where they could be overheard.

The girls, Leia and Indy stayed close in the corner, with the older kids from Endra also packed tight. They stuck with their own age group instinctively.

Astrid, however, lay her own bedroll next to the silent boy against the wall.

He lay on his stomach, his face turned outward. And though he spoke not a word, his blue eyes tracked every noise and shuffle in the room with sharp attention.

His gaze flashed to Astrid when she lay out her mat beside him. She sank down on the floor, opposite the doors.

She held his stare, sure he read her as much as she did him. The boy remained awake, as though he sensed her urgency, well after the first snores drifted from the other children in the room.

“Lay still.” Astrid spoke as lowly as she dared. Not in a whisper, just a dulcet, slow, voice, so as not to alarm anyone. “We’ll talk like this. No one turn their face or react.”

On that merit, she needed to trust that those she addressed, the elders of the room, did indeed hear her. Because no one indicated either way.

“What they’re having us do, it’s dangerous.” she tried. “This group, the ones that took us. They’re not our friends. They’re going to try to use us.”

Even hearing the words out loud, Astrid wondered how they must sound to people not privy to the Static Opposition and its methods. How do you convince a bunch of kids that singing could be turned to malicious intent?”

“They’re going to take us all somewhere. And use that exercise to hurt people,” she warned.

“What are we supposed to do?” Finn’s voice wafted from behind Astrid’s shoulder. But she dared not look to him, should the guards watch through the windows.

“When we do it for real, we need to pull against the stream. Us older ones, we need to resist-- work against the energy,” she explained. “I don’t know if we can overcome all the little ones, but we have to try to slow it down, or lessen its severity.”

“Go against the grain?” A new voice, one Astrid didn’t recognize, squeaked below her position. She assumed one of the girls, Leia, or Indy.

“We don’t have to do any more than that,” Astrid comforted. “My friends will take care of the rest. But we have to fight it. We have to try. Then, when my friends come rescue us, we take the little ones, and run away from these people.”

“That sounds scary,” the girl answered back.

“I know,” Astrid admitted. She quickly consoled, “But it’s going to be okay. We’re stronger than you realize. You are. We have to be brave. If we’re not, people could get hurt. Our people. We can do this, you can do it. You don’t even have to show them you aren’t complying, okay? We just need to pull back, and then we run for safety. That’s it. We’re all going to get out of here.

“Don’t tell the littles. We don’t want to worry them or alert the Statics to what we’re doing. We have to be sneaky here, and we’ll all get out of this alright.”

The boy in front of her stared on, wild-eyed at her suggestion. But behind the shining orbs glowed an intelligence that Astrid reached out to.

“Zeke.” She licked her lips. The nickname sounded foreign on her tongue. “You’re from Earth, right? How old are you? Seventeen? Fifteen?”

The boy didn’t answer. He possessed a small frame, but a mature face, which made it difficult to discern his age. But his name could not be a coincidence. Neither could the way his eyes blinked with attention to hear it.

“Jinx?” She tried again.

His eyes rounded. His energy fluttered to hear a name long lost to him.

“I’m a friend of Adan Romo. Do you remember Romo?”

The boy’s fingers curled into a fist. The only reaction she caught in the dark. But yes, she could tell, he certainly remembered.

“He’s going to meet us there. He’s going to help us get out of this.”

Zeke’s eyes sparkled, as though she whispered both the sweetest promise, and heartbreaking lie.

“You do believe me, don’t you?”

Zeke rolled over, to face away from her.

And Astrid was left to lay in the dark and only hope her words reached any of her fellow Channelers.

She thumbed her crystal, and her dog tags under her shirt. There she rested, caught in a purgatory between worlds. As much a prisoner among her fellow Channelers as she’d always been. And yet, her home, and family, surely sped away among the stars and out of reach.

And she remained, with a foot in each world. But it felt of neither.

~~~

The next day played much the same.

The kids were permitted to dispose of their time however they wished unless they grew too restless and unruly. But many of the Channelers, trained in repression all their lives, fell into one of two extremes.

Some let their inner thoughts consume them. And they spent their day in quiet reflection. Either in fear, or simply resigned already to circumstances beyond their control.

And some grew increasingly wild without the structure the Sanctuaries provided. For them, only the familiar wave of a pulsar stick could settle them. And just as Maya suggested, the tools were often brandished, and that proved enough.

Only later the next night, after they returned from yet another session in the auditorium, did Astrid witness the repercussions when a Channeler could no longer take it.

Indiana returned from their exercise shaken. As though she finally realized, through Astrid’s eyes, what they trained to do.

She said nothing at first. But steadily, her energy grew agitated.

Fellow Channelers in the hall gave the girl a wide berth, as her discourse rang for everyone to feel. But it only singled her out, until her friend, Leia, tugged at her hands to stay her.

“Indy? Indy, it’s going to be okay!” Leia’s voice, too, tightened in panic when Indiana couldn’t stabilize.

“No, no it’s not!” Indy shook her head with increasing vigor. She covered her mouth with horror the more she discerned of their purpose. “They’re going to-!”

“Shh, shh, sh!” Leia hushed when the doors burst open. The guards, ever attentive to any growing disturbance, intruded.

Channelers fled the surrounding area, as a pulsar stick extended quickly and without reservation.

“What’s going on here?”

“We’re sorry!” Leia answered. “It’s nothing! My friend, she just needs a minute.”

But Indy, further terrorized by the stick waved in her face, clutched her head with a whimper.

“Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.” She muttered to herself, careless of who overheard. “We have to and we can’t. We can’t. And we have to!”

While most sought to distance themselves from the troubled teen, Astrid found no choice but to move in.

She crossed to the young girl and caught her arms. Much like she once did with Maya, she attempted to walk Indy through their meditations.

But the girl panicked at her touch.

“No, no, they’re going to—you can’t stop it! You can’t save us!”

Indiana nearly screamed at the specialist, careless of what it might reveal. Thankfully, the Statics still saw the unstable girl as the true threat.

Maya, too, stepped in to direct her rant away from the listening Statics.

“Indiana, it’s okay. This is temporary. It will pass.”

Maya seemed a more soothing presence to the Mercedes Channeler than Astrid, but still, Indy railed.

“No, Maya, it’s no use!” Indy screamed louder. “Kill or be killed, that’s what we’ll do! Kill or be killed-!”

At that, not even the Statics could risk her rambling further.

The burst of a painful, piercing, frequency vibrated through the hall and tunneled into the Channelers’ senses.