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.)
