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Chapter 33
“Everybody quiet down,” Savannah said as she strode into a noisy meeting room on Red Ship. The entire crew had gathered and was nervously speculating what Savannah had learned from the Planners.
It was the day after the dance and the attack that saw three Planners murdered and two of the Podkind’s ships taken, ostensibly by their own crew. Everyone was shaken and the city was on lockdown. Cyclopes, as they’d learned the armored orbs were called, were everywhere, as were patrols of soldiers brought in to help the Dome Guard. Slive, who’d been promoted to Stahl’s old position for some reason Charleston couldn’t grasp, had summoned the remaining ten captains to the Council of Nine Building that morning. After, of course, it’d been determined they weren’t traitors out to steal their own ships like the crew from Orange and Purple Ships were.
“What’d you learn?” Jacksonville asked Savannah before she could even sit down.
“Not much. They’re still questioning the remaining crew.”
“Wait, not everyone from those ships turned traitor?” Sofia asked. She hadn’t grown much over the years, but her body had rounded out some to match her already round face. Her softness was only on the surface, however, as she was a deadly fighter with an acerbic wit.
“No,” Savannah replied. “Only about half of each ship, though the captains and first mates of both.”
“Where did they go?” Madison asked. She had grown tall where Sofia had grown wide, and she wore her dark hair short and styled differently seemingly every time Charleston saw her.
Savannah shook her head, her long hair swaying with the motion. “No one knows.”
“Why would they steal their own ships?” Dublin asked, furrowing his brow over his small eyes. They looked slightly less pig-like now that his features had hardened with adolescence, but his face was still pudgier than most.
“There are several theories,” Savannah replied with a grimace, “but the Planners don’t know.”
“What do they know?” Vienna asked harshly. She had continued growing taller and wider, like New York. She wore her hair short and the acne on her face had mostly cleared up. “Why the meeting if there’s nothing to tell?”
Savannah stared at the large girl until Vienna blushed and looked down at the table. “Sorry,” she mumbled. She had come to respect Savannah as captain but she was still frequently blunt to the point of rudeness.
“It’s not because of what they know or what they don’t that Slive summoned the captains,” Savannah started, her tone serious. “It was to tell us our training is being accelerated.”
“What? Why?” Charleston couldn’t help but ask.
Savannah shot him a look before answering. “Again, Slive didn’t say why, but I think it’s pretty obvious. Yesterday’s attacks have them on edge. Someone is out to sabotage our mission and kill as many of New Washington’s leaders as they can along the way. The Council decided it was too risky to wait to start our search for a new home.”
“But can’t they protect us?” Jacksonville asked. “We’re not ready yet!”
“They can’t very well protect us from ourselves,” New York muttered.
Savannah nodded. “They know someone got to those captains and turned them against New Washington, but they don’t know who or how. They can’t risk giving these people more time to work on the rest of us.”
“When do we leave?” Charleston asked, thoughts of Gala opening a hole in his stomach.
“On our nineteenth birthday,” Savannah replied.
“But that’s barely six months away!” Jax protested.
“Ragnar, son of Ragnar, ready now,” Ragnar said, stroking his bushy blonde beard.
“I know it’s not necessarily good news for most of us,” Savannah replied, “but it is what it is. Now, we have to get ready,” she continued in a tone everyone on the ship knew well at this point. “We’re going to Med Dome for physicals.”
The room erupted in groans and protests.
“Med Dome!” Vienna complained. “What for?”
“What’s a physical?” Dublin asked, frowning.
“It’s a series of tests meant to assess our health, fitness, and ability to survive the rigors of zero gravity and space travel,” Savannah explained.
“Even better!” Vienna remarked sarcastically. “Another test! Haven’t we had enough of those by now?”
“I don’t remember ever getting a physical,” Dublin replied, confused.
“Tests in general, Dubs, geez,” she replied.
“But I thought our ship had it’s own gravity,” Madison said by way of protest.
“Yes and no,” Jacksonville began. “Once we get going it will generate its own gravitational force via the rotation of the particle accelerator, but until then…”
Savannah cut him off. “Is now really the time for technical explanations? The physical is not optional, so put on your flight suits and meet in the hangar in five.”
The room instantly filled with reactions to the news as they left for their cabins. A few minutes later, everyone had gathered in the hangar. Two of the Cyclopes hovered guard by the entrance to their ship. Savannah led the way down Space Branch and towards the main dome. As they went, Charleston saw crews from several of the other ships all dressed in their flight suits and headed in the same direction. No one spoke. The Branch felt like a tomb. He spotted Gala and gave her a small smile. They hadn’t spoken since the attack, as everyone had been confined to their respective ships by Slive.
They arrived at Med Dome as one large crowd a short while later and were greeted by Dr. Williamson and Dr. Mosley. Williamson was an elderly man with a closely trimmed white beard that met a ring of silver hair encircling an enormous bald spot. He wore an ankle-length white gown and held a holoscreen with hands covered in spots and gray hairs. Dr. Mosley was a short, plumpish woman with redder hair than even Duman’s and light green eyes. Her face was oval-shaped and she was quick to smile, despite her crooked bottom teeth. Where Dr. Williamson was bristly, she was bubbly; he perpetually annoyed with something or someone, she constantly cheerful.
“Welcome!” Dr. Mosley said with a smile. “Hope you’re excited about your physicals! And don’t worry about this being a test. There are no wrong answers,” she said with a laugh.
“Yes, you will pass or you will fail,” Dr. Williamson added with a grimace. “Red Ship, you’re with me. My colleague here will take Yellow Ship. Green and Blue ships, you will have a chance to explore our waiting area.”
Charleston and the others followed Dr. Williamson down a side corridor leading to a room full of hard chairs. “Take a seat,” he commanded before disappearing through a door leading deeper into the dome.
“What do you think we’ll have to do?” Charleston asked no one in particular.
“Do you really think we could fail?” Madison asked.
The door opened and a man dressed in white holding a holoscreen shouted, “Savannah!” from the doorway.
Savannah stood and gave her crew a smile. “Good luck everyone and don’t worry. Everything will be fine.” She sounded awfully serious. Charleston wondered if she’d told them everything.
A few minutes passed before the door opened again and New York’s name was called.
“That was quick.”
When it was his turn, Charleston followed the man in white through the door, down another sterile looking hall, and into a small room off to the right with yet another door opposite. A woman wearing a similar white outfit and holding a similar holoscreen was waiting for him.
“Take your flight suit off,” she commanded, not even looking at Charleston.
“What?”
“Your flight suit,” she said. “Off.”
He unzipped the front and slid it off his shoulders, then hesitated.
The woman looked at him from under her brows. “It’s nothing I’ve not seen a hundred times, child.”
Charleston sighed and finished undressing.
The woman stood and began examining him with various devices. She listened to his heart and lungs, looked in his eyes, ears, and mouth with a light, pressed on various parts of his abdomen, and had him hold his arms in random positions and move them against her in a number of directions. She typed something in her holoscreen after each part. Finally she attached small metal circles with little blue lights in their centers to his chest, back, legs, and arms.
“Proceed through that door,” she commanded.
The next room was larger than the first. A metal contraption dominated the center of it and another woman wearing white sat over a holoscreen at a small desk in the corner by yet another door leading further into the depths of Med Dome.
“Step on the treadmill,” she commanded by way of a greeting.
Charleston did as he was told and was surprised when the rubber tread began moving. Before he knew it, he was no longer walking but running, the woman giving no further commands or even looking at him. Her eyes were glued to her holoscreen. He ran for several minutes before he found himself moving faster and faster just to keep from being thrown from the contraption. His breathing became heavier and he was sweating, but he felt as if he could run forever.
Eventually he had to sprint to keep up with the tread as it flew under him. His breathing was coming quick and ragged now and sweat dripped down his face and splattered on the ground around him. Finally, just when he thought he was going to collapse, the machine slowed down. The woman still said nothing.
After a few minutes, she pressed something on her holoscreen and the treadmill stopped.
“Proceed through that door,” she said.
Charleston did what he was told. What followed was a series of strange and difficult tests that left him exhausted. In one, he had to catch small, squishy balls from the air as they were shot at him from a miniature cannon. With each catch, another ball was added to the sequence until he lost track of how many he’d caught. Eventually, a second cannon appeared, then a third, each firing its own sequence of balls in an unpredictable order. His hands were a blur as he snatched the balls from the air. He eventually couldn’t keep up with them all and the test ended.
For another test he was fully submerged in a great vat of water and forced to hold his breath, the little blue and metal discs attached to him blinking all the while. Continuing the water theme, the test after that was a small pool with a continuous current. He was told to swim until he couldn’t any more, the current gradually strengthening until it pushed him back against the glass.
Not all the tests were physically strenuous, however. In one, he was given some kind of shielded helmet that covered his eyes and told to say every time he saw a dot of light flash. Still in the helmet, he was told to say right or left based on a ping. In one of the stranger tests, he was told to stand in a large cylinder made of glass. He stood there for ten minutes with nothing happening. Finally, a man in white, the male clone of all the others, pressed a button and the door to the tube opened.
“Proceed through that door,” he said pointing.
“What was that all about?” Charleston couldn’t help but ask.
“Through that door, please.”
The tests continued for so long they began to blur together. Twice more he was told to get in water, once into an icy tub, the next into a steaming hot one. He was put under extremely bright lights and told not to move. He was put in another glass tube, this time within a larger glass room. The room then burst into flames. He thought his skin had singed off from the fire before they shut it down and he was told to leave.
Eventually he made it to the last test – the zero gravitation chamber. He knew it to be so because the woman in white with the holoscreen who was waiting for him when he entered told him as much, breaking rank with her many clones who refused to greet him in any way.
“Welcome,” she said with a smile. “This is the zero gravitation chamber. While you’re in there, we’ll be running all kinds of tests via those little nodules attached to you.”
Charleston returned the smile. He liked this woman. “Have I passed so far?”
She looked down at her holoscreen before answering. “You’ve down extremely well,” she said, sounding impressed. “One of the best of the day!”
Charleston couldn’t stop the smile from splitting his face.
“Now, for this final test,” she continued, sliding closer to him on her wheeled stool, a syringe of purple fluid appearing in her hand, “we’ll just need to give you a small injection. It’s a dye that will allow us to track any changes caused by the loss of gravity.”
The hair on the back of Charleston’s neck stood up. Something wasn’t right here. He couldn’t say what, but his Ranger training was telling him she wasn’t telling the whole truth. “I didn’t know gravity affected blood,” he said cautiously, not offering his arm.
“Oh, yes,” the woman replied reassuringly, grabbing his wrist and straightening his arm. “Gravity is an amazing thing. Too much or too little of it has odd affects on the human body.” As she spoke, she swabbed the crook of his elbow in preparation. “Now, this may sting a little,” she said, leaning towards him.
Charleston tugged at his arm, but the woman’s grip was surprisingly strong.
“Don’t struggle,” the woman chided.
Panic seized him. This woman was lying about something, he was sure of it. He jerked his arm from the woman’s grasp, thoughts of Violet and Green and what had been done to them rushing through his mind. What was the real point of this shot?
“It’s okay,” the woman soothed, reaching for his arm again. “It won’t hurt that bad, I promise. Just a little sting.”
“I don’t want it,” Charleston said, his entire body breaking out in a cold sweat.
“What? Why not?” the woman sounded genuinely surprised.
“I just don’t. Let’s do the test without it.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an option, dear,” the woman said, her voice suddenly stern. “You can’t pass your physical until you’ve completed the zero gravitation test. And you need this shot in order to do that. Now, quit being silly and let me see your arm.”
“I’m not being silly,” he snapped. “I don’t want any shot!”
The woman sighed and put the syringe down, reaching for her holoscreen as she did so. “Then we’ll just have to do this the hard way.”
Charleston tensed and scanned the room for potential weapons. He suspected the hard way meant reinforcements. He doubted this middle-aged woman could subdue him by herself.
He was wrong.
The last thing he saw was the woman in white press a button on her holoscreen and then he entered a world of pain as his entire body seized. Within moments he was unconscious.
Chapter 34
Charleston dreamt of flying needles dripping poison and friendly looking women who turned out to be Professor Slive in disguise. But soon even the nightmares stopped, replaced by a black nothingness he only vaguely sensed as he awoke.
And he did eventually wake, though it took him a long time to realize he hadn’t just passed back into the dream world, for the reality he found himself in felt unreal. He was facedown on a bed and there was something hard in his mouth. He groaned and tried to roll over, but couldn’t. After a moment, he heard voices and a ripping pain shot through his chest and the hard thing disappeared. Another pain in his side he hadn’t even noticed yet flared up and then went away.
“Charleston?” a soothing voice came from very far away. “Charleston?” It was closer this time.
There was a dull pain in his lower back, but this was quickly lost in the sudden wave of agony he felt when he tried to sit up.
“Charleston,” the voice said again. It sounded familiar. “Don’t move. You woke up sooner than we’d expected and you aren’t quite healed yet. We’ll give you something for the pain and you’ll sleep again.”
He grunted something into the bed. His mind felt sluggish. Did she say healed? What happened to him? How did he get hurt? He tried to recall the last thing he could remember, but all he could think was that he was hungry. A sting in his arm and then he was floating blissfully through the air, his body weightless. So this is what zero gravity is like, he thought just before slipping into unconsciousness again.
When he woke the next time, he was still facedown on the bed, but when he went to move his body didn’t ignite in agony. He felt groggy and fuzzy, but otherwise okay. As he turned over, he glimpsed something dark on his back. He twisted to look as best he could. It was a large, black shape that covered his entire back. He spun the other way and saw the same thing. Hesitating, he lifted the sheet and looked at his lower body, bracing himself for what he would find.
Just then, the door opened. He looked up to see Dr. Williamson walk in with the woman from the zero gravity stage of their test. He was still in Med Dome.
“Hello again, Charleston,” the woman said. “I’m Dr. Sheton. How are you feeling?”
“Confused,” he replied, still trying to see his back. “What’s on my back?” he asked. He suddenly remembered the searing pain he’d felt when he woke the first time, and panic rose up inside of him. What had they done to him?
Dr. Sheton nodded to Dr. Williamson, who produced a square mirror from somewhere in his jacket. He held it up for Charleston to see his back.
There was an image of some sort on it, black and dark green. He could make out two eyes, what looked like scales, and a long tail that curled down past his waist.
“Is that a,” Charleston could barely get the words out, “crocodile?”
Dr. Sheton beamed at him. “I knew you’d recognize it!”
Charleston was too stunned to say anything. His back, arms, and upper legs were covered in a giant tattoo of a crocodile. The amount of detail was impressive, he had to admit, but why had they given him a tattoo?
“How does your head feel?” Dr. Sheton asked, reaching a hand out to touch his forehead.
“Fine. Why? Did you tattoo it too?” he asked, desperately looking at his face in the mirror for any sign of ink.
“Not exactly,” she replied.
“What?!” he nearly shouted. “What does that mean?”
“Listen, Charleston,” Dr. Sheton began. “What I’m about to tell you will be shocking, but I think you’ll grow to appreciate the significance of what we did.”
A pit in Charleston’s stomach yawned open. He took a breath and looked the woman in the eyes. “What did you do to me?”
“Let’s just say we augmented you,” she replied with a small smile. “We gave you access to a living weapon, if you will. The tattoo on your back is a combination of graphene and a special blend of peresilium. The two combined can do remarkable things. Will allow you to do remarkable things.”
Charleston was speechless. Whatever she was trying to tell him sounded so foreign as to be unintelligible.
“To put it briefly, the tattoo on your body has the ability to transmit electricity, energy really, in its various forms.”
A flash of memory shot through Charleston’s mind. Professor Duman, shirtless in the woods, shooting bright lights from his hands to form the image of a bear. “So, what, I can shoot light from my back?”
Dr. Sheton smiled. “If you’d like. But you can do so much more. Your entire flesh has been layered in the graphene-peresilium mix.”
Charleston looked down at his hands and arms. They didn’t look any different.
“You can’t see it, Charleston,” she said with a laugh. “You can only see it on your back because there’s a higher concentration of it there. Think of the tattoo as a battery. Your entire body has been layered with peresilium so it can serve as a conduit for the energy stored in your tattoo. Are you following me?”
“Sort of,” he replied. “The tattoo on my back lets me shoot lights from my hands?”
“Not lights, Charleston, energy! You can shoot beams of pure energy from any part of your body! And not just shoot energy. You can do lots of things with it! We haven’t even begun to understand all the possibilities this technology offers!”
Charleston blinked. Dr. Sheton was clearly excited, but he was still struggling to process it all.
“The peresilium layer covering your body will also protect you from harm,” she continued, her eyes sparkling.
Charleston looked at his arm. “So I’m invulnerable or something?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “But if you concentrate the energy in one spot, you’ll be able to prevent a great deal of damage.”
Charleston shook his head, still unable to wrap his brain around what he was hearing.
“We’ll teach you how, don’t worry.”
“You said you tattooed my head?” he asked, remembering her earlier remark.
She laughed again. “Not your head. Your brain!”
Now Charleston was truly speechless. Surely he was still dreaming.
“Not all of it!” she added quickly. “We just put a few tiny dots here and there for various crucial reasons.”
“Like?” he managed to ask.
“Like controlling the energy stored in your tattoo, for one. All you have to do is think what you want to do with it and it will happen.”
Charleston gave her a doubtful look.
“Don’t be surprised if you can’t do it yet. It’ll take some practice.” After a moment, she continued. “But that’s not all!”
Charleston braced himself for whatever crazy came next. He didn’t think she could say anything that would surprise him after what he’d already learned. He was wrong.
“We’ve been having this conversation in Chinese,” she continued with a big smile.
“What?”
“How do you think you’re going to fit in with the locals if you can’t even speak their language? We put a tattoo on the part of your brain that processes language. Just a tiny one, I promise,” she winked at him. “This stuff is truly amazing! Since it can transmit electric currents, we’re able to upload programs to the tattoos themselves!”
“And these programs speak Chinese for me?”
“Sort of. It’s complicated. But once you’ve catalogued all the words in a language, you can transfer it to the tattoo on your brain and voila! You’ll sound like a native!”
Charleston shook his head again. It sounded so unbelievable.
“I know it’s a lot,” she said soothingly. “You’ll have plenty of time to practice with it and learn its capabilities. I know Professor Thurmond is eager to see what you can do on the Combat floor.”
Something clicked for Charleston. Thurmond had told them on the first day of Ranger class that they’d be given some advanced weaponry as a safety net. This must be what he meant.
“Another is waking,” Dr. Williamson said.
“Oh, Savannah’s awake!” Dr. Sheton said, taking the holoscreen from Dr. Williamson. “We have to go,” she said to Charleston. “You were the first of anyone to come out of the anesthesia. I think it was because we had to shock you unconscious.” She paused. “Why were you so reluctant to get the shot?”
Charleston shrugged. “I don’t like needles.”
“Well, get some rest,” she replied. “We’ll release you tomorrow. We want to monitor you one more night to make sure nothing weird happens.”
“Like what?” he asked, but she was already out the door, Dr. Williamson in tow.
Charleston lay back and tried to sort through everything he’d just learned. It sounded so unreal. Yet he’d seen Duman that night doing things impossible to fathom, and he’d seen others with tattoos, as well, like Liz and Stanton. Had they been augmented, too?
He spent the rest of the day alternating between dozing off and trying to activate his tattoo. But no matter what he tried, nothing happened.
The next morning, he and the others were released from Med Dome. However, instead of returning to Red Ship, they went straight to Combat Dome, excitedly chattering away like podlings about their new tattoos. As it turned out, Charleston wasn’t alone in having a crocodile. All of them had one. Looking at New York’s massive back and the image detailed across it, Charleston had to admit it looked more impressive than he’d first thought when he saw it reflected in the small mirror.
None of them had been able to do anything with the tattoos so far and they were all eager to start their training with Tank.
Except when they entered Combat Dome, it wasn’t Tank who greeted them, but Professor Duman.
“Welcome!” their former Mindfulness and Maturity professor said, a smile bending his scar.
Charleston and his shipmates were all smiles and laughter as they gathered around the short, red-haired man they used to whisper scary stories about in the dark. For Duman’s part, he reciprocated the excitement, hugging several of them and flashing a broad smile at the rest.
“Let’s see those tattoos!” he said.
They showed him the crocodile and he oohed and ahhed appropriately. “Take a look at mine,” he said, slipping off his shirt and turning to reveal a large brown bear standing on its hind legs, its head lifted in a silent roar.
“Cool!”
“Now,” he continued, straightening his shirt, “let’s get started. If you could all be so kind as to sit,” he continued, stepping back and gesturing to the floor.
Charleston and the others unconsciously fanned out in front of Duman and sat cross-legged, as they always had when in his classroom.
“Your tattoos are designed to work on two levels,” he began, “the unconscious and the conscious. On the unconscious level, you don’t have to do much of anything.” Duman tapped something on his wrist computer. A panel on the floor opened and a bo staff rose up from it. With a foot, he flipped it up to his hand and twirled it expertly a few times. “Say I sneak up behind you and hit you with this stick.” He brought the staff down in a sudden, quick overhand blow.
Charleston was surprised. He had no idea Duman knew anything about weapons.
“The staff connects and the graphene mix covering your body automatically protects you from some of the blow, like a suit of armor would. However, this protection isn’t much. So while a blow from a staff won’t kill you, you’ll still have a headache.
“Now, let’s say I hit you with something more deadly.” He again pressed a button and another panel opened on the floor. “Like this giant battle axe,” he continued, flipping the weapon up to his hand and swinging it deftly back and forth a few times before bringing it down in the same overhand motion as the staff. “The damage from such a blow would be much more severe. The layer of graphene throughout your body would offer some protection, but not enough to stop your skull from being split open. There isn’t much difference in dead and more dead. So, on an unconscious level, your tattoos can’t stop a mortal blow from fulfilling its reason for being.”
Charleston smiled at this typical Duman phrase.
“However,” the man continued with a grin, “if you were to see the blow coming, it would be possible to access the energy in your tattoo and strengthen the part of your body the axe was swinging towards to the point where you could prevent almost all harm.” He swung the axe again towards the Podkind, who instinctively leaned back slightly. “Or, even better, you could use your energy to prevent the blow from ever landing.”
“Whoa,” Charleston and several others replied.
“We’re telekinetic now?” New York asked.
Professor Duman laughed. “In a way, yes. Energy in its simplest meaning is motion. The peresilium cocktail in your body moves on the molecular level, thereby creating energy, which can then be transformed into light, sound, heat, electricity, or movement. You can channel this energy in one of those forms to different parts of your body. But in order to do this, to move enough energy from your tattoo to say, the arm blocking my battle axe, you must learn to bridge the gap between the unconscious application of energy and the conscious, which is what we’re going to learn today.”
He swung the axe a few more times, as if for the sheer joy of it, before tossing it to the ground with a clang. “Before I continue, let me just give you a word of warning. These tattoos are marvelous pieces of technology, but they have their limits. You are not invulnerable. When done correctly, you can use the energy stored in them to protect you from blows that would otherwise kill you, but you don’t have an endless supply of this energy, nor will it save you from all forms of attack. You will want to conserve it as much as possible until you really need it. It’s still better to dodge the axe blow than use the tattoo to shield yourself from damage.”
“How much energy do we have?” Jax asked.
“And how will we know when we’re running low?” Vienna added before Duman could answer.
“And how do we replenish it?” Dublin joined the questioning.
Professor Duman smiled. “It’s good to be back in the classroom with eager students, though I don’t remember such attentiveness when I was teaching you about mindfulness,” he jokingly chastised. “I’m not entirely sure how much energy you have there, but as you train, you’ll get a feel for how much you use blocking axes or jumping to the tops of buildings or, conversely, bracing yourself for a fall from a tall building.”
This brought gasps of awe and excitement from the group. Something clicked in Charleston’s mind at Duman’s words and he stifled a smile. So that had been how Violet and he had survived their crash landing all those years ago. She must have a tattoo somewhere under her cloak. She’d mentioned the Underground had been able to keep up with New Washington’s technology thanks, in part, to the Apathetics who found a new lease on life there.
“As to how you’ll know how much you have left,” Duman was continuing, “the neat thing about these tattoos is that as you use the energy, the coloring fades. It will take awhile for you to notice any discernible difference, but after enough use the greens and blacks won’t be as crisp. Eventually, it will disappear altogether and then you’ll be out of energy.”
“And how do we get it back?” Dublin asked again.
“Ah, yes. The sun,” he replied. “The tattoos are solar powered.” After a moment, he added, “much like New Washington,” and laughed, instantly returning to the dorky professor they knew from childhood. “Now, these are all good questions, but we need to return to the chief question of them all. How do we access this energy consciously?”
The Podkind went silent again, all more than eager listeners.
“Remember the candle flame?” Duman began. “I taught you how to use the flame to transcend your physical state. You will use the same technique. Your goal is to transcend your consciousness and your unconsciousness so as to join them in harmony. You must rise above your very self and become one with everything around you. Only then will you become one with yourself.”
“What does that even mean?” New York asked with a grin.
“You must become one with yourself,” Duman repeated. “You must become aware of nothing so as to become aware of everything.”
“Uh,” New York said in reply and Charleston could see the others were just as confused.
“Remember the flame!” Duman replied, reaching into a pocket of his pants and producing a small candle. “Lose yourself in it until you and the flame are the same. That’s what you have to do with your conscious and unconscious selves.” He lit the candle with a burst of energy from his finger, eliciting small cries of surprise from the Podkind. He set it down and walked around behind them, softly talking them through the process. He didn’t seem at all irritated this was material he’d already taught them years ago, but few, if any, had mastered.
Charleston, however, had learned how to do this not just from Professor Duman, but from Minemaru, the psychotic samurai whose body he’d occupied during his Test. It didn’t take him long to feel himself disappear into the familiar sense of tranquility and distance that came with this exercise. He was both outside of himself and completely aware of everything inside as well. It was a beautiful contradiction.
“When you’ve become one with the flame, I want you to think about the heat of it. Imagine how hot it is and how hot it would be if you were to hold your hand over it. Now, I want you to become the heat. You are hot, as hot as that dancing flame.”
Charleston started to sweat.
“Concentrate on your heat and focus it on the tip of your right index finger. The entirety of the heat now resides in just your fingertip and it wants to get out. Set it free!”
Charleston felt a strange releasing sensation. The air around his finger shimmered. Near him, the same shimmering appeared at the fingertips of Savannah and Arkhangelsk. After another moment, Jax and New York produced them, as did Paris and Sofia.
“Focus on that ball of energy coming from your finger now,” Duman continued, ignoring those who hadn’t yet succeeded. “Imagine it extending from you to the candle. You are the candle. The flame and your energy join you, making you whole.”
A tongue of shimmering light lashed out from Charleston’s finger an instant before several others shot from his fellow shipmates. The candle flew across the room.
“Excellent!” Professor Duman said happily. “Let’s do it again!”
And they did. Again, and again, and again. They practiced until even Ragnar could produce a wavy blur, though it took some one-on-one time with Duman for this to happen. At first, Charleston was mesmerized by the way the air bent and shifted wherever he focused. But as he got the hang of it, he wondered if this was all there was to their tattoos.
“Can we really only push things with the energy?” he asked.
“Energy is movement, Charleston,” Professor Duman replied. “It’s how we use that movement that makes it powerful.”
Over the next several weeks they met with Professor Duman every day including Sundays to hone the mental skills necessary to access the energy stored in their tattoos. Eventually, they could do it with just a single thought. Duman assured them that over time even the thinking would seem unconscious so that their conscious and unconscious selves really would unite as one, but Charleston guessed this was just more Duman speak.
Once they mastered tapping into their tattoos, the next thing they learned was how to use them. Professor Duman had them practice shaping the energy in basic forms, first. They made small narrow beams to knock a single object from among many over, as well as broad waves that would take them all out. They went from moving the burning candle to moving the battle axe to pushing each other.
The more they trained, the less and less articulation of thought Charleston needed to form the energy. A simple picture in his mind of what he wanted was enough for him to make it happen. At least with the simple stuff. With each layer of complexity, he had to start over with a clear thought of what he wanted to do and practice until it became more unconscious than conscious, more image than word.
After a month or so of pushing objects, they transitioned to pushing parts of their bodies, and their training became much more exciting. This skill required an intense build up of energy that they then shifted from their tattoo to their fists or feet. In this way, they were able to speed up their blows as well as hit harder. The first time Duman demonstrated this, he punched through a metal wall.
The last thing they learned with Professor Duman was how to create energy shields, both large and small. This proved to be more challenging than any of the other skills, as they didn’t just release the energy, but instead had to maintain it in a specific shape. It was much harder than Charleston had imagined and he found that even after he could produce the correct form, it tended to disappear almost immediately. The light bear Duman had made in the woods seemed even more impressive now.
“Creating and releasing energy is easier than creating and sustaining it in a certain shape,” Duman explained. “You must maintain the connection with your tattoo and the shield the entire time.”
Eventually, Charleston and the others were able to keep a shield for an indefinite amount of time, but it didn’t come as easily or naturally as it needed to.
“Remember,” Professor Duman said on their last day together before the Podkind transitioned to Combat class under Professor Thurmond, “you understand the basics now of what you can do with your tattoos, but you’re far from mastering even these. Practice them as often as you can, but experiment as well. There is still much I haven’t taught you about this technology, but we are losing our everlasting battle with time.”
It was true, too. They could count the time that remained before their departure in months now, not years. He and Gala, who had a wicked tattoo of a hammerhead shark on her back, looked at these months in the same way they had thought of the years before. They reassured each other about just how many more of them were left and then tried hard to forget time existed at all.
Combat class with Professor Thurmond was both different and strangely the same. The tattoos allowed them to hit harder and faster, but since they all had access to the same amount of energy, it didn’t take long for their sparring matches to appear as prosaic as before. An accelerated punch blocked by a reinforced arm looked identical to a normal punch blocked by a normal arm. The ends of fights were where the newness was more evident, as a failed block from a blow twice or three times as strong as before often sent the loser careening through the air.
Weapons training was even more exhilarating than hand-to-hand combat. The first time Charleston blocked an otherwise lethal sword strike with his arm, he’d instinctively grunted in pain. Except there was no pain. The energy shield he’d brought up just before the blow landed had protected his arm completely.
Once the Podkind understood they could deflect blows from weapons with their energy, they quickly began sparring unarmed against an armed opponent. Despite Duman’s advice to dodge rather than take the hit, they couldn’t resist the lure of using their limbs to block weapons. They told themselves it was important to learn the limits of their tattoos, but Charleston knew they really just liked feeling invulnerable as they watched metal blades bounce off their flesh. Getting a sense for how much energy was used, which was a lot, each time they did this was just an added bonus.
After another month passed this way, Professor Thurmond began teaching them how to use their energy to prevent blows from ever landing in the first place. Rather than block and deflect with an energy shield, they had to stop their opponent’s weapon mid swing. It was a little like what they had done with Duman when they’d pushed individual objects from shelves with a single lash of focused and controlled energy, except only more difficult. For starters, they were trying to hit a moving object. But they also had to do this while said object was coming at them at great and deadly speed. Then they had to maintain their energy hold on it long enough to stop the blow entirely.
“Don’t target the blade,” Thurmond explained after numerous failed attempts. “There’s so much power and force there it would cost more energy to stop the blow at that point than it would to use a shield to deflect it. The whole point of this technique is to use less energy to achieve the same results.”
“So what do we aim at?” a frustrated Jacksonville asked.
“Focus on stopping the blow at the shoulder or arm of your attacker, or at the base of the weapon. And do so as soon as possible. The less momentum in the swing the easier it will be to prevent it.”
They continued practicing. They were no longer attending any of their other classes and were focused only on learning how to use their tattoos properly. They were trying to catch up with time.
“Ready?” Thurmond asked one day, nocking and drawing an arrow aimed straight at Charleston’s chest.
They’d moved on to learning how to swat flying objects out of the air. If stopping sword swings had been hard, this was something on a different level. Near impossible was how Charleston looked at it.
“Why can’t I just use a shield again?” he asked.
“It’d take ten times the energy to create a shield as it would to simply lash the arrow midflight,” Tank answered, then released the arrow. He didn’t abide stalling.
The arrow thunked into Charleston’s chest and fell to the floor. It had a blunt end. They weren’t yet ready to try with live ammunition.
“Again!” Thurmond shouted and released.
Charleston sent a line of energy as fast as he could at where he thought the arrow would be, but the result was the same. Another thunk and another arrow on the floor at his feet.
“Again!”
Thurmond let go of the string, but the arrow didn’t move.
“Very nice,” the big man said approvingly. “That’s a great way to stop an arrow. However,” he continued, drawing another arrow from the quiver at his hip, “that’s not what we’re practicing.” He released the arrow and Charleston lashed at it again. And missed again.
“Ark,” he called Charleston’s fellow ranger over and handed her the bow. “Pair up everyone!” he said to the rest of them. “We’re going to do this every day until it’s easy!”
And they did. For weeks. They practiced with arrows, with knives, with spears, and even with rocks. It was frustrating, but the first time Charleston managed to nick the arrow enough to send it spiraling off past him, he felt a rush that motivated him to master this new skill as quickly as possible.
By the time they completed their training with Professor Thurmond, they were adept at using energy to prevent blows and to augment their own fighting, whether hand-to-hand or with weapons. Preventing arrows and other ranged weapons was still a work in progress.
“Stopping an arrow half the time is good,” Professor Thurmond told them on the final day of Combat class. “Unfortunately, it means the other half of the time you’re dead. Keep working on it when you can.”
“Why do we have to stop training now?” Charleston asked. They were still a few weeks from launch.
“Tomorrow your final preparation begins,” Thurmond answered.
Ripples of reaction passed through the group.
“What is it?” Jacksonville asked eagerly.
“Professor Slive will tell you tomorrow,” Thurmond answered with a deflecting smile. “In the meantime, I suggest you get a good night’s sleep. You’ll need it.”
The Podkind is a science fiction/fantasy novel written by Johnny Cycles. Click here for the next installment!
Photo by Ruslan Valeev on Unsplash