The end of the story

It was pretty easy getting out after that. I guess TDH’s private security system doesn’t hook up to the police or anything, or else maybe he made sure they weren’t contacted. I guess that worked out best for everyone. It means C&I didn’t go to jail, and TDH didn’t have to explain really hard stuff to any human law enforcement. So, all good.

We got to our rendezvous point like an hour early. Utah wasn’t there. Seriously—if I had been him, I would have waited at the rendezvous point the whole time and been ready as soon as we showed up. So, Chelsea had to call him (it turns out he was hanging with a local friend while we were risking our lives!) and we sat around for about 10 minutes. By the time he arrived I was seeing spots and had thrown up a couple times from the pain of the laser burn.

At least as soon as he arrived he took us straight to the hospital. I got painkillers right away and I was out of it for a while after that. The next time I was really awake was a couple days later. I was in a private room in the super ward of the Mayo Clinic, and Chelsea was sitting next to me. She was dressed nice and had her makeup on and all like usual, but even so she was a wreck. She almost cried all over me as soon as I woke up, and kept talking about how bad she felt that I had gotten hurt.

I tried to comfort her, but almost immediately Utah and a lawyer and a doctor came in. All 3 of them were Waking Guard—these guys are freakin everywhere in the super world once you start looking for them. It’s terrifying. They had come because they needed to hear my version of what had happened right away. No time for me to recover or anything. Noooo.

It was probably a good thing though, because even though I was totally awake the painkillers were still helping me out a lot, and thanks to them I didn’t feel bad at all about lying to the WG. Also, being laid up with a bad injury made it easier to act like I was mad at TDH. Even though I don’t remember all of what I said, I am sure that I proved to Utah and the others that I was on their side.

(I was thinking back later, to the experience at TDH’s house. I don’t remember too much of what happened in the end, but I am almost sure that the second after I got hit, all the weaponry in the room turned off. Like, he must have had his finger on the off switch, and just wanted to make sure that I could give the WG a good show.)

The next day, Utah and Chelsea went back to the Centre. I stayed at the hospital for close to a week, mostly to do some physical therapy and practice some healing exercises. They fast-tracked the recovery process, and by the time I left the doctors said that the scar looked like it could have come from 3 months of normal healing.

I went back to the Centre, and tried my best to catch up to Chelsea for our last few days. Then, with Utah’s okay and an official “we trust you” from the top guys (all WG), we flew back to Minneapolis just in time to take our finals. Gah. But, at least the NSC promised that we would get decent grades for the semester no matter how we did. We’ll probably do better even though we missed a whole month than we would have if we had stayed around, considering our progress reports for Sep/Oct.

And now finals are over and it’s winter break.

Thanks, Daddy, for not letting me tell you all of this out loud. That would have been stupid—but I didn’t think I could keep in inside any longer. Writing it down helped a lot.

As soon as I finish typing this up I’m going to print 1 copy, and then reformat the laptop. Tomorrow, we’re going down to the safety deposit box together to lock my story away. And then, hopefully we can all forget that it’s there. But if anything ever happens to me, I want someone to know the true story. I don’t know how much good it will do you, though.

Here’s what I do know. The Ancients are bad news. They nearly destroyed the world trying to take it over once, and of the 2 I’ve met, 1 (Darcy) would have had no problem with trying for a repeat performance. I don’t want to go all Waking Guard on you or anything, but I’m sure that there are other Ancients out there who think like Darcy.

The Waking Guard is also dangerous. They think they’re doing the right thing (and probably, for the most part they are) but they’re so powerful, and I think they’re too prejudiced against the Ancients to think clearly. And since they run the NSC, I’m pretty sure that if they went on record saying anything about the whole situation, the world would believe them. And they have all the supers, willing to do whatever they ask.

As for me, I trust Chelsea and the Petrovskis—and I trust TDH. I don’t know if I should trust him, but I do. He saved me the once from Darcy, and he saved me again when I was putting my life on the line to do something that I knew was wrong. And if the WG are right and there is a war coming, I want to be on his side. Even though his side will probably be like 3 people, and they’ll probably be able to keep up the fight for like 5 minutes tops.

That’s a pretty depressing ending, huh? I’ve been thinking too much about this stuff. I need a vacation.

I hope you never have to read this, Daddy. But if you do, remember that I love you.

Your Deena

(The end. Return to the table of contents.)

No good deed

I probably screamed. I’ve never been that stressed out before, so I’m sure I did. I just can’t remember doing it.

TDH was still holding my wrist a couple of seconds later, and he pulled me back away from the signet in the middle of the room. I was so freaked out that I barely noticed him closing the door to the room and pushing a couple of buttons, probably locking us both in together.

He let go and looked down at me then. I have no idea what expression was on his face—I just remember staring into his dark, dark dark eyes and wishing I was dead. And thinking I probably would be soon. He didn’t sound angry tho when he asked, “Ms. Markowitz, why on earth would you want to steal that?”

It all came crashing down on me. The horrible, illegal mission, the knowing that if we didn’t do something that was really wrong then we’d be prisoners forever, the realizing that we had been caught (or at least that I had been caught)—all this crap, all at once. I couldn’t hold it all back any longer. I started to cry.

And not just cry—I was wailing. There was so much inside of me that I couldn’t handle it anymore. It had to come out. The room blurred up, I couldn’t hear the alarms anymore over the sound of my own voice (tho they were already really muffled as soon as TDH shut the door), but I did feel it when TDH wrapped his arms around me. And then a second later, he was in my head.

I instantly knew he wasn’t angry. He was just confused—and a little annoyed, and a little worried. But I could feel him there, being really polite but letting me know that he needed to know why we were here before he could do anything about the guards or the security system.

He probably wouldn’t have been able to force his way in, not with all of the training I had been doing. Keeping your mind safe from telepaths is 1 of the basic lessons at the Centre. But he didn’t even try. Maybe if he had I wouldn’t have felt so cooperative, but I was absolutely done with the Waking Guard and all this bullsh*t (sorry Daddy). So I opened my mind and let him see everything he wanted to know. And probably showed him more of the story than he would have thought to ask about on his own.

I know it surprised him. And I know he didn’t like the situation any more than we did. He was especially unhappy about the WG being so sure that they would have to fight the Ancients to the death sometime soon. TDH thought that was ridiculous, but he also decided that if the Waking Guard was expecting a fight, then the chances were really good that they would make sure one happened.

It probably only took him a couple seconds to get the whole story. Then he sent me some (very necessary!) calming vibes, and he let me follow his consciousness out into the hallway, where he made his guards forget how to actually pull the triggers on their guns.

Then he turned back to me and shook his head. “No good deed goes unpunished—does it, Deena?” I didn’t know exactly what he meant, but after that he pulled a square of cloth out of his pocket and used it sort of like a pot holder to pick up the signet. He talked to me while he examined the thing.

“I didn’t want you to touch this jewel because, as the most important item in the room, it is very well protected. The shielding is strong enough that even I would need at least 10 minutes to lift it, and I suspect that even the best of the Waking Guard would take months of study to disarm it effectively. Had you simply grabbed it….”

TDH picked up one of the velvet draperies that lined the shelves, and pressed a corner of it against the signet. The velvet began to bubble and melt. TDH threw it onto the floor, but whatever had started eating at the corner kept moving up until it had destroyed a good 6 inches of the fabric.

“Luckily,” TDH was tying up the corners of the cloth square that he was using to hold the signet, “you thought it seemed too easy. You tried using something else to pick it up, and then you saw this nondescript piece of cloth folded and nestled against the bottom of the column.” He lifted up the cloth that was holding the signet. By now he had tied it all the way around, so that no part of the signet was showing. “That cloth, so carelessly left behind, turned out to be the appropriate protection.”

I was probably staring like an idiot, so TDH had to take my hand and put the wrapped signet into it. He wrapped my fingers closed and smiled. “Now, where is this crystal that you’re supposed to leave in its place?”

I handed it to him. TDH looked at it thoughtfully, and then he placed it where the signet had been. Almost as soon as it landed, the little room had the same feeling to it as a practice room at the Centre after C&I had been working out for a few hours. It was like a shout of energy, just for a couple seconds—strong enough to let any nearby Waking Guardian know that we had been successful and pass that info along to the rest of them.

TDH winced as the energy signature practically exploded around us. “That’s going to be hard to explain,” he muttered.

By then, I just couldn’t take it anymore. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping us?” I asked. I was starting to get stressed again—Chelsea was still guarding the way out, after all, and was probably getting pretty worried—so I might have yelled a little again.

TDH let me into his head for a second, and I could see that he was still trying to figure it out a little bit, himself. But then he told me, “I hope there is no struggle between your people and mine. No good could come of such a thing. But if a war comes, it will mean that someone, whether of your people or mine, acted foolishly—and that others did not listen to reason. If the conclave is at fault, I will not cast my lot with theirs. If the Waking Guard starts the war, I will do what I can to stop them.” He smiled, and I could tell that he hated the idea of a fight, no matter who started it. “Either way, I welcome the idea of having an ally among the Guardians. And selfishly, I enjoy knowing that if the future does unfold badly, you and Chelsea owe me a favor.”

Maybe because we were still connected mind-to-mind, it felt stronger than just a normal statement. I could feel it in my gut—I owed him. Big. And it was something I wouldn’t be able to ignore or forget about. The Waking Guard were going to think that we were totally loyal to them when we got back, but actually we’d practically be double agents. I started to hyperventilate.

“Deena!” TDH was squeezing my shoulders. “Deena, we haven’t much time. Listen! Don’t tell Chelsea about this. Let her believe that everything went according to plan. That way, she can speak honestly to the Waking Guard—and you can follow her lead when you pretend that your own account is genuine. Someday you will tell her the truth, but not now.”

I nodded. I told him I understood.

TDH opened the door leading to the bedroom and everything beyond it. “Put your prize in your pocket, Deena. This room is made to be easy to enter but difficult to escape. I’ve deactivated most of the security system, but you’ll need to run like your life depends on it if you want to get out of here. Now, GO!”

He shoved me toward the door. Not actually out of it, but toward it. I stumbled, looked back at him once, then put the signet into my jeans pocket and ran for the exit.

I heard more of the defense system than I saw, but some sort of laser or something did get me in the back, just around my right shoulder blade. I can’t remember anything ever hurting so much, but I had to keep running. I reached Chelsea, who was at least as freaked out as I had been earlier (I had left her hanging for a while by now). We blasted past the guards, knocked them out, and reached the elevator shaft. We forced it open, and I had to think around the pain to control the wind and blow us down gently.

At the bottom, we tossed a few smoke bombs around the lobby and made a break for it.

(Continue to the end of the story.)

Proving ourselves

C&I talked it over and decided there was nothing we could do but tell the WG that we were ready to prove ourselves to them, however they wanted. Utah looked really happy when we told him (he even hugged us and said he was proud of us, & he’s not a hugging person) and the next thing we knew we were up in the corner office again.

There was just 1 top Guardian this time. (I guess the most powerful people in the world don’t want to spend all of their time hanging out in rural PA.) She told us that they needed proof that “when the time comes,” we wouldn’t desert the WG to hang out with the Ancients. Their idea of proof was that we needed to do something that would ensure that the Ancients (aka TDH) would see us as the enemy.

I know, fun right? & the Waking Guard was really helpful—they had already decided on what we could do for them to prove we were on their side.

Apparently, when TDH took over all of Darcy’s stuff, 1 thing he inherited was her “signet of power.” The WG described it as being kinda like a sealing ring or a crown that the leaders of the Ancients all have, just to make themselves feel good about being powerful. I get the feeling that they made it seem less important than it is, but I really don’t know. The WG said that if we wanted to prove that we were with them, the only way we could do that was by stealing this signet and bring it back to the Centre. Oh, and replace it with a glowstone that had the magical equivalent of “Chelsea and Deena were here” stamped inside it.

I’m pretty sure C&I both felt pretty sick after this meeting. We told the WG that we’d think about it. Utah seemed to think that we were just scared about getting caught instead of really bothered that we were being forced to steal from someone we thought was a good guy. He tried to be comforting tho, and told us all the ways that the WG would help us do this successfully, and he was all Mr. Supportive Guy again (you know, like how a “counselor” is supposed to act).

Utah kept insisting that what we were supposed to do was just about the same as if we were playing a prank on TDH—no real damage. And the Waking Guard had put together floor plans and security readouts on TDH’s headquarters. (It’s the new ReginaPro building, but he lives on the top floor.) C&I really didn’t feel like we had a choice. We felt really bad about it, but we started planning, and practicing, and pretty soon we were on a private NSC jet with Utah, heading back home to Minneapolis.

We were on official business, a “training mission,” so we couldn’t tell anyone that we were in town, or visit anyone. I really wish I could have seen you then Daddy, and asked for advice. Of course, a big part of why the WG was isolating us seemed to be to make sure that we couldn’t ask anyone for advice, so we had to rely 100% on how they felt. Utah brought us into Minneapolis on a Sunday, late afternoon, and dropped us off about a block from TDH’s building. He gave us a rendezvous point and told us to meet him there in 3 hours, or else.

(We’re pretty sure that “or else” meant “or else we’ll find you and lock you up for the rest of your lives, and so long as we say you used your powers immorally, nobody will question us.” Srsly, must be nice to be an all-powerful organization.)

They had given us a fake security card that would stall the whole system, a couple smoke bombs, and of course a little glowstone that radiated our energy signatures. (Also a floor plan and a schedule for the guards, even tho we had pretty much memorized those.) I don’t know where they got all the materials, but since they’re obviously not the awesome good guys they make themselves out to be—who knows?

The area was all office-building-y, so on a Sunday afternoon it was practically deserted. I guess the Waking Guard figured there was a good chance TDH would be out, too. (They didn’t check his location the way they did the guards tho… probably afraid of what would happen if he noticed them spying on him.) C&I were wearing street clothes. We had super outfits already (the prototypes Brook had put together and asked us to try out and evaluate), but this was so far away from what supers are supposed to do that we decided to go in blue jeans.

We got in thru the loading docks with no problem, and rode the regular-people elevator up to the 16^th floor. The penthouse was on the 19th, but we would only get 1 chance at overriding the security system. We took the emergency stairs up to the top, and then we had to use the security scrambling card to knock out the door from the stairwell onto the roof.

We got thru, but alarms started going off less than a minute later. There were a couple of glass skylights that we were careful not to accidentally crash thru (the 1 above the dining room is stained glass), and we had to really scramble across the roof to get to our destination—the door right next to TDH’s industrial kitchen, next to the outdoor barbecue area.

This was just a couple weeks ago, December, so nobody had used that door in a while. I blasted it off its hinges (been picking up some freaky tricks at the Centre), and we hustled thru a few rooms, down hallways, etc. We’d memorized the floor plan, so we knew where we were going. The long hallway in the residential part of the house ended at TDH’s bedroom, which had doors inside it leading to 2 private baths, a walk-in closet, the study, and “the treasure room,” which was built like a panic room and had all kinds of valuable stuff inside.

We were just starting down the hallway toward the bedroom when some guards started running toward us from the main service entrance. There were 3 of them, 1 calling for backup on a headset, and they were armed. I’m better at keeping people back, but C’s the one who can stop armed guards (water + guns = wet gunpowder), so I grabbed the little glowstone and she started building a water wall. The only way out now was the way the guards had come in, so she would have to hold them off until I got back and then we’d knock them out and hustle out down the elevator shaft.

Daddy, please don’t yell at me about taking risks. Trust me, I know. I would never, ever do anything like this if didn’t feel like I absolutely had to. This was a really special situation.

We were past all the locks. I got into the bedroom no problem, and the treasure room door was closed but not locked. I ran inside, hoping to get this finished as fast as I could.

The room was the size of a normal walk-in closet (probably TDH’s walk-in closet is the size of my room. I mean, this whole place was nice.), with shelves along all the walls. Some of the shelves had boxes, but mostly there were a bunch of fancy things—jewelry, small figurines, some stones and gems—on display, on top of draped velvet. In the middle of the room there was a small pedestal, with a glowstone propped on its top that was cut like a diamond and about the size of my fist. There was some sort of shape inside of it, sort of like a tiny carved sea serpent, that seemed to move in tiny circles. I knew it had to be the signet. I started to reach for it—

—and my hand was just a few inches away when cold fingers grabbed my wrist and TDH hissed in my ear, “Don’t touch that!”

(And now for something completely different.)

Meeting the WG

Utah didn’t explain anything after that—he pretty much just hustled us down the hall. He was talking on his cell phone the whole time. Even tho about 1/2 of what he was saying sounded like code, it was pretty obvious that he was talking to other members of the WG, and telling them that we had passed their test and he was bringing us up.

The whole training grounds area has a lot of connected underground stuff, and we were going thru a lot of tunnels before Utah finally got the 3 of us into an elevator. He had to type in a security code before it would move, but when it did it went up to the top of the only decent-sized building in the Centre.

We got off in a fancy hallway with glass walls and doors, security panels everywhere—obviously the HQ of the whole place. Utah swiped us all thru a few doors, and then we were in this giant office with floor-to-ceiling windows. It was dark outside, but we were pretty high up. (C&I saw the view later during daylight. A few training fields, and bare winter trees as far as the eye can see.)

There was a conference table off to the side of the room, with these 5 kinda older men and women sitting around it. I recognized 1 of them right away, and 3 others as soon as they introduced themselves. You would too—these are people that everyone’s heard of. I don’t think I should name names tho, even here, especially because some of them are famous both as normals and as supers. It was a really intimidating group to meet. Even Chelsea was star-struck.

And, it turns out they’re all Waking Guardians. Even crazier—they’re the original founders of the National Super Council. (The whole WG has been scattered around the world for so many centuries, and they wanted to get everyone back together on the same page—esp. now, with the Ancients awake and all.)

They asked us to tell them our story, and we did. Of course we did, the whole thing. They were on our side, right? So, we trusted them. They were especially interested in the part about TDH, and they asked us a ton of questions about the time right after he rescued us and when he met with the Petrovskis. We thought they seemed weirdly fixated, but we went along with it. Afterwards they thanked us, welcomed us again and sent us off the bed.

We didn’t think the deal with TDH seemed so big, even with all the questions they asked. But then the next day they summoned us late in the afternoon. Utah took us back up again (he got to sit at the table with the important guys even tho he’s like, 24) and this time the top WG guys didn’t look friendly so much as “concerned.” You know, that look the principal has on her face when she’s all like, “I’m not mad at you, but I’m concerned,” because your grades are dropping or you’re fighting in the hallways or something. Maybe that’s just me….

The WG told us that they had thought about everything we had told them, and there was a part of the story that made them uncomfortable. Back a few thousand years ago the WG had decided not to wake up the Ancients when the world started to get nice again, because they were sure the Ancients would just go back to trying to take everything over and killing anyone they disagreed with. Lately, ever since the Ancients woke up on their own, the WG had been trying to keep tabs on them—“because we know what they are capable of.” According to these powerful guys sitting around the table, our story about Darcy proved everything that they had “been sure of” all along.

All the Ancients were evil and had to be stopped.

We tried pointing out what we thought was pretty obvious. Darcy had been evil, yeah, but TDH on the other hand had been pretty much the opposite. He had wanted to stop her, and he had risked his life to contact us and ask for help. He wasn’t trying to take over anything.

Trying to explain this to the Guard turned out to be a mistake. Apparently, they had decided that we (C&I) were pretty good at what we did, but their 1 big concern was our experience with TDH. They thought that if we had been “tricked” into believing that an Ancient wanted to help us, then “when the battle comes” they couldn’t be sure that C&I would fight “on the right side.” It feels kinda silly to write this, but they were so serious.

C&I were like, “you’re crazy—what battle? Why should there be a battle?” and the WG were all, “FOOLISH CHILDREN, of course we will soon have to battle them—to the death!” It was almost creepy. Then they told us that they needed proof that we would side with them—and unless there was some sort of proof, they couldn’t trust us. Then they sent us back down to training.

The next week or so pretty much sucked. Utah was giving us the cold shoulder, and even tho we were working our tails off, we didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere or being taught anything new. And all of a sudden we were both sure that people were watching us—like, under surveillance watching us—everywhere we went.

And then we got the very clear impression that if we didn’t prove ourselves to the WG, we would never be able to leave the Training Centre. Like, evar.

(Continue to Brook's outbox.)

Registration

I like to say that what happened next is Brook’s fault. It’s sorta true. I mean, she came up with the idea in the first place and she managed to convince us, so I blame her.

Brook’s the one who decided that C&I should join the National Super Coalition. She’s really against the idea of rogue supers (I don’t blame her—I would be too if I had her experience of the Fireshield Siege!) and even tho Chelsea’s her sister and all, she still didn’t like the idea of the 2 of us running around unregistered. I think it’s the “if everyone else acted that way, the world would explode” idea.

But also, she did make a great point that if C&I ever got caught doing something, we could be in major trouble—like jail forever trouble. And sure, we got our powers from this special legacy instead of stumbling into them like most supers, but at the end of the day we do have special powers, and the NSC’s rules don’t actually specify that their rules don’t apply to the Waking Guard. So, C&I and Brook and the Petrovskis talked it over, and in the end we decided that we should make the plunge.

And then, you and Mom know, I came out to you. And it was a little awkward but worked out fine.

We contacted the NSC and they visited us both right away. They decided it was safe for us to stay in “parental custody” for the next couple days, and they arranged to send us to the Training Centre for a month-long intensive interview/orientation. You know, time to get a sense of who we are and make sure that we’re not going to accidentally blow up the school before June.

C&I flew out to NY with C’s mom, and the NSC advisor picked us up at the airport. He took us in a totally blacked out van to the NSC Training Centre’s “secret location.” (It’s in Susquehanna PA, middle of nowhere, in case you’re curious. Most of it is a creepy complex inside high walls with woods and private property signs for at least a mile in every direction.)

NSC orientation is a lot like boot camp, except instead of push-ups they make you do obnoxious energy-focus-y stuff. C&I had learned a lot already, so we had to pretend that we were just starting to figure it out and to make a lot of mistakes. That made the work a little bit easier, but even more repetitive and dull than it would have been otherwise.

We were meeting with a ton of different people every day, to practice stuff and demonstrate our strength and do psych evals and all that. The only person who stayed with us day after day was our “counselor,” Utah. Don’t know who they think they’re fooling with the camp lingo.

One night about a week into our time there, Utah’s playing with this glowstone. He was talking about the quality of light refracting thru crystals, and then he asked, “You ever seen anything like this?” and he cupped the glowstone in his hand and made light pass thru it so it lit up the wall in front of him, with a symbol in dark relief against the light.

It was in the same language as TDH’s message before, the language that we could understand without knowing how, that was so powerful that you could feel the emotions of the words. This one said, “Friend.” It didn’t quite feel like “friend” tho—the emotion was a little too cautious, sort of standoffish or secretive. After all, Utah didn’t know whether we were in on the WG stuff or not.

It turned out that this was a minor but hugely important test. Every new super in the registration process gets teamed up early on with a WG, who does something like that to see if the new person is WG or not. They almost never are, but the main reason why the founders set up the NSC in the first place was to find all the Waking Guardians who had been scattered over the centuries and to bring them back together into one group.

(You probably didn’t know that was the reason for the NSC, huh? Of course, the mission statement on the website is also true. They do want to keep supers from causing trouble and to set up a safe place for people with powers to work together. Still, their biggest goal is, in Utah’s words, “getting the band back together.”)

So, Utah had this glowstone with a message in the ancient language—a situation that didn’t work too great for us last time, remember—and C&I were too surprised to do anything but stare. Probably with our mouths open a little. Utah looked a little self-conscious about how amazed we were, and he turned off the light and muttered something about it being just this dumb trick he could do.

C&I looked at each other, and I guess we both sort of nodded at each other, and then Chelsea pulled out her stone and asked Utah, “Did you put the word inside yourself? We’ve received messages in ours, but we don’t have any idea how to send anything out.”

Utah must have known how to send messages tho, because just then my hand started to feel warm right where the glowstone was embedded inside, and when C held hers up it had a symbol written inside of it, too. A different symbol. One that meant, “Welcome home.”

(Continue to Brook.)

The showdown

When I woke up I was standing in this weird blue capsule. Okay, so not standing so much as tied up—totally covered in these half-glowing ropes, so I couldn’t move much at all. I felt funny, sort of out of it, like if I weren’t tied up straight I probably wouldn’t have known how to stand up or walk in a straight line. The ropes were cutting into me a little, and after a while they started to hurt.

I don’t know how much time passed, but the blue around me got kind of clearer, and Darcy was standing on the other side of it. I don’t think she was actually scary looking (too pretty and fashionable for that), but I was terrified when I saw her.

“Good morning good morning,” she said, as sweet as can be, and she leaned against the clear column that was trapping me. “I hope that you’re more talkative than your friend, because there are so many questions I want to ask you!”

Then wham, I felt like electricity was burning thru me, shooting out thru all of the rope-thingies, and I wanted to scream except that I couldn’t breathe and I almost blacked out. Then it stopped, and I could see clearly again and she was still standing there in front of me. Just getting caught up on my breathing was hard, but in the next couple of seconds Darcy said, “How’d that feel? There’s more of it coming if you don’t answer all of my questions, little girl. Understand?”

I didn’t answer her, so she hit me with the pain again. It was worse the second time. But now I could scream, so I did. Darcy asked me again if I understood what would happen if I didn’t answer her questions, and I said yes as fast as I could. I had trouble saying it without yelling it, but that seemed to make her happy.

“Excellent,” she said, and she held this ball of buzzing electrical light in her hand that I knew must be more bad stuff, and she smiled her sweet smile again and said, “In that case, let’s get started. Does the rest of the Waking Guard know you’re here?”

She asked a lot of other questions after that, but I don’t remember many of them. I do know that I gave her a lot of answers she didn’t like, because the pain kept getting worse and worse—and she threw a lot of it at me. I’m pretty sure that most of her questions had to do with “the rest of the Waking Guard,” and where they were, how many of them, that kind of stuff. Questions that I didn’t know the answer to then, and didn’t think I would ever know.

One thing I do remember from the time and that’s worth mentioning—sometime during the interrogation, I felt this terrible, cutting pain in my hand. Darcy thought I was trying to exaggerate how much everything hurt and she yelled at me extra for a couple seconds while I screamed and cried, but it felt like something was digging into my palm. There was no mark later, but once we were safe I realized that the glowstone that proved that I was a Waking Guardian was gone. At first I thought it was lost, but the next time I tried to call down the wind, this circle on the inside of my hand started to glow. Mr. and Mrs. P thought maybe the stone had been trying to hide itself from Darcy. Later on, Utah said that it was something that happened sometimes. Almost like a rite of passage—that when you’re feeling complete helplessness and have practically decided that you’re not going to survive much longer, then if you are “true in spirit” (God, I wish I knew what that meant) then the stone will bond with you and help keep up your strength.

I wasn’t feeling any extra strength right then, but with all the power Darcy was burning thru me it’s possible that just a tiny extra oomph could have been the reason I was able to recover later. I don’t know how long she questioned me, but by the end I know I was just crying and screaming non-stop and saying “I don’t know! I’m sorry!” to every question.

Finally, after a long time, she announced that she was bored and reached thru the column wall. As soon as she pressed her hand against my face I felt weaker. I felt cold—and she seemed to glow just a little. Her eyes sparkled with my energy, and she smiled again.

Before I could do anything or say anything, my mouth was gagged shut and the walls around me were up again, starting to turn blue and translucent. Darcy sounded farther away when she said, “You’re useless, too. For information, anyway. But all that power you’ve got stored up inside… that’s something I can take off your hands. So sad that you’re dying so young….” And then the walls went opaque, and there was no light or sound.

It felt like it stayed that way forever. I was alone, and cold and terrified, and expecting her to come back and kill me any minute. And I was hungry and thirsty and exhausted. To tell you the truth, after a while I was bored. She had captured us late Friday night, and by the time anything else happened it was early Monday morning, so even tho that was the scariest experience of my life up to then, sooner or later I just wanted anything to happen, even if it was really bad.

Eventually of course, something did happen. The walls of the column started to glow and clear up again. I could see the giant room in front of me (since Darcy wasn’t blocking the view this time). In the very middle of it there were these 2 glass coffins, and Darcy was standing between them. A little past her was the guy, her fiancé—and Brook, Chelsea’s sister. I could also see that there was another column/prison not too far from mine, and Chelsea was tied up inside. I remember hoping that I didn’t look as terrible as she did. The others were far enough away that I couldn’t see them very well. I could tell that Darcy and the fiancé were arguing, but then after a minute she brought him closer to our half of the room. She made him kneel and then she pulled him up so he was floating in front of her, and then he fell on the ground. Then Brook went over to them and Darcy grabbed at something (the glowstone necklace she had been wearing—turns out it had been sucking up Brook’s energy and storing it for like a month), and Brook fell down.

After that, I felt like some invisible hand was pulling stuff out of me. It was stealing every part of me that made me happy, that made me want to get out of bed in the morning. Then it took out the strength that let me walk and run, or even stand up. I knew that pretty soon I wouldn’t even know who I was, but with so much gone already I didn’t care.

Before that could happen tho, all of that warm fuzzy stuff came ricocheting back. It blasted me in the face like furnace heat, and the glowy ropes vanished and I was free. Well, kinda. The column was still there, and if it wasn’t then I would have fallen to the floor. Instead, I fell against it and half-leaned to stay mostly on my feet. In the rest of the room, the ceiling was falling.

I lost sight of Darcy, Brook and the fiancé when a huge piece of the building toppled into the room, hitting right near the middle. Then the whole place started to shake. I know I started panicking then, and I think Chelsea did too. We were still stuck inside the clear tubes, and by this point a lot of twisted metal and building parts were falling nearby.

That might have been the scariest part of all, but just when I was getting ready to give up again, Brook and the fiancé came running toward us. She was sort of collapsed against him, so they weren’t running too fast, and they were inside this glowing bubble of light. I didn’t get what that was all about until a big piece of rock came falling toward them and it bounced off the light. A shield.

They went straight for Chelsea. Brook seemed to be yelling, and Chelsea was pushed up as tight as she could get against the column wall, yelling back. Sound was carrying pretty clearly thru the columns by this point, but I wasn’t listening. I was too busy yelling, “Get me out of her!” You know me—totally calm in the face of danger, right? Right.

The guy got Chelsea to stand back, and he put his hands on the column. A second later the entire thing vanished, like no column there at all, and Brook grabbed Chelsea. I think they were both too exhausted to stand up straight, so I have no idea how they held each other up. I was super freaked by now that they had forgotten me, but Chelsea at least remembered that she was part of a team, and she got them over to where I was still stuck. He got me out and into their shield-y area, which was good because a second later the whole ceiling caved in.

So, there we were—me, Chelsea, Brook and Darcy’s fiancé—except I guess I can’t keep calling him that, since Darcy was dead at this point (and it turns out that they were officially married right before the building fell in, so I guess if I were being accurate I would call him her widower). He has a name (it was even on the message that he sent us a few days earlier), and it’s beautiful, but there is no way I can write it down with English letters. If I tried, you would read it wrong, and I can’t stand the idea of anyone mispronouncing anything from that language. In public he uses the name David—David Ages, cause he took her last name. They’re not progressive or anything, it’s just that she had the higher rank so he basically married into her family. But he does not look like a David. I mean, it almost seems offensive to call him that, he’s so not-a-David. Later on during a girl-time slumber party Brook called him TDH (short for Tall, Dark and Handsome)—and even tho he’s not really all that tall, it works better than David. So I’ll call him TDH here.

Brook was incredibly worried about Chelsea, and asking her all sorts of stupid questions—Is this the secret you’ve been hiding from me? So you and Deena aren’t, like, a couple? (It’s an idea Brook had gotten into her head that C&I let her believe because it meant she didn’t butt in as much). I don’t think Chelsea was up for answering too much just then, and I know I wasn’t, so we were kinda relieved when TDH filled in a lot of the background for her about what the Waking Guard was, and what it meant to be in the Guard. He didn’t get it all right, but he was working with a pretty old job description.

Outside the shield, the building was still coming down for a while. After we had all shared our stories, C&I both sort of nodded off with our heads in Brook’s lap. It wasn’t too comfortable, but we were exhausted. I think Brook and TDH stayed awake and talked for a while.

Eventually the building stopped collapsing, and TDH woke us up. He made (or just found?) an opening, a narrow tunnel basically, that could take us all the way to the surface. We followed him out, and near the top he put a sort of invisibility illusion on us so we could go past all the rescue workers and police officers without them asking any hard questions.

We all got into Brook’s car, which was about 2 blocks away. TDH was driving, and he asked me directions to my house. (Brook was nodding off herself by this point.) On the way, he asked, really nicely, if C&I could put him in touch with our “trainers”—the Petrovskis. We didn’t say that we would, but we promised to ask them and to do our best to convince them to meet with him. TDH gave us each a business card, and then he dropped me off at home.

I’m sure you remember how tired I was that day. I got home about 9:30 (an hour after I should have left for school) and went straight to bed, grungy clothes and all. I don’t even remember fighting with you and Mom about not going to school that day, even tho I do remember being grounded for the next 2 weeks. Still, it’s a good thing you didn’t force me to go. I would have gotten into even more trouble if I had fallen asleep 3 times in each class.

Things got better after that, for a while. TDH met with the Petrovskis, and even tho both sides were nervous he managed to convince them that he had no interest in taking over the world or destroying the city or any of the kinds of stuff that Darcy seemed to be into. He just wanted to manage the business he had inherited and live a quiet life. His parents were in bad health, and once things got organized here he figured he’d invite them out to live, passing as human and just generally enjoying what the city had to offer.

I really do believe that’s all that he wants, even after hearing the whole Waking Guard’s opinion on the situation.

(Continue.)

Investigation

The Petrovskis ran some reconnaissance, since C&I didn’t want to get too near and make things go explode-y again. We did step up our practicing to double time, even tho we had already been working at it for what felt like every minute of our lives. On top of all that we were also both exhausted from calling down the lightning, and over the next couple of days it seemed like no matter how much we slept or ate healthy food we just couldn’t get back to normal. I think the moral of the story is that lightning is never the answer. It just makes stuff really complicated.

Not as complicated as the high council of the Waking Guard, granted. But still, complicated.

(Sorry, trying to avoid spoilers, but… just sayin’.)

Meanwhile, there was all this talk around town about rogue supers. Some vague reports talked about “bystanders witnessing suspicious behavior” around the building right before the lightning and all that, and C&I were sure that sooner or later someone would recognize us and we’d be put away for 20 years for unlicensed or malicious use of powers. Thank God nobody was killed.

C started paying more attention to her sister, to help us gather information. It didn’t do much good, because Brook was so stressed out about everything in her life, but we did learn that Darcy (Brook’s boss) was getting married soon, and in the society photos we could find, he looked like an Ancient too (except with a tan, which we agreed made him look a lot less alien than Darcy).

A little less than a week after the lightning incident, Chelsea heard from Brook that Darcy’s wedding was moving up to just a few weeks away. We were already so worried that we decided that this was probably bad news. C&I were starting to feel better, so we had gone close (but not too close) to Darcy’s building, and we could tell that there was something scary powerful going on around there—and neither of us thought it was going to be anything good.

Then—I remember that it was another Thursday, early in October—C&I were doing some practice routines after school, when our glowstone bracelets started to warm up. Mrs. P was there and we told her right away. She looked confused and a little worried, and said she had an idea of what it might be, but that we should go into the darkroom to be sure. So, the 3 of us went down to the art dept (luckily, nobody was staying late that day, so we didn’t have to come up with some stupid excuse to clear out the room) and Mrs. P told us to hold up one of the glowstones and trickle just a little power thru it.

We had practiced that kind of thing before, so it wasn’t too hard. Chelsea did it, and the glowstone started to, um, glow. The light came out in one direction away from us and toward the wall. And in the shining, dark words began to form.

It wasn’t any language we knew, but somehow we could read it just the same. The words felt ancient but beautiful, kind of like that time when we went to see Macbeth at the Guthrie and the acting was so good that after a while you could just forget how old the language was and let the words take you somewhere else.

The message was from this guy with a long name that you can’t really pronounce in English. He said that he was Darcy’s finance (so, the tan guy from the announcement we had found), and he explained a little bit about what she was planning to do. I won’t go into too many details because it didn’t matter much in the end, but let’s just say it involved a lot of death and destruction and the end of Minneapolis as we know it. Fun stuff like that. He didn’t really have a say in the matter, except that he didn’t want to destroy the city, so he was asking us to meet with him and try to come up with a way to stop her.

I know what you’re probably thinking. Trap trap trap. Yeah, but—it’s hard to explain. The language made it impossible for him to be lying. Like, we read the words and we could feel how the guy who wrote them felt about what he was saying. Mrs. P said that that was how she had heard that the Ancient’s most powerful words worked, and it was exactly like the old stories. He couldn’t be faking something like that. It was just too real. So, we talked for a while and decided to meet where the guy wanted to—about 2 blocks from Darcy’s building, on Friday around midnight.

Chelsea told her sister that she was spending the night at my place. I knew that after we were done we might need to actually crash somewhere, so I asked you and Mom if C&I could go down to the cabin (it was the week before we planned on going out and closing it down for the winter) – that way, we could always say that it had been too cold and that we had driven back to spend the night with some good old fashioned central heating. The Petrovskis wanted to help, but now that we were the official Waking Guardians there was nothing they could do except give us advice and tell us old stories, so they stayed behind. C&I drove out, parked a little ways away and went to the rendezvous site. (We wore all black, because we are just that cool.)

We were supposed to meet this guy in a stone piazza not far from the river. It was a really posh space, nice sparkly stones and a Chinese-style rock garden going on, which it turns out is really pretty in daytime but makes all kinds of creepy shadows at night. We got there and didn’t see anyone, so C&I walked into the middle of the piazza. Dumb move, it turned out. We figured that out fast, because as soon as we were both there we started to feel really scared and then completely frozen, like we had turned into stone ourselves.

Then out came this woman—Darcy Ages, the Ancient who was Brook’s boss. Totally channeling every evil Disney queen. She was all like, “Well well, what have we here?” and, “He was right; there are Waking Guardians about—but such little, stupid ones!” We couldn’t move, and also as soon as we got stuck we felt incredibly empty. No wind, no rain.

Then she started talking about what a perfect coincidence it was that we had just shown up. I can’t even describe how freaked out I was, and she just went on like we were a couple of Thanksgiving turkeys or something. I wasn’t clear on what she was planning, but it was obviously not good, and then she twitched her fingers and I fell asleep.

(Continue to Deena and Chelsea's big coming out.)