Harken

10 Rebirth

I awoke to a gentle rain drizzling down the sides of my face: the misty spray of a storm coming to its close. It smelled of rot and acid and all the hideous chemicals that permeated the city air, and tasted even worse when it dripped through the corners of my lips and down my dehydrated throat. I rolled over, groaning in pain. My torn clothes were already soaked through to my skin. They squished miserably against the wet rock beneath my body.

I was disoriented but managed to force my eyelids open. My forehead rested on my arms, elbows covered in gray rock chips. So I wasn’t going to die in my dream this time? How lucky I was.

Even then, the final dream was blemished by memories of something else…a priest on a steeple. A gun pointed at my face. Chemicals that had forced me to sleep. Arms picking me up, carrying me into the sky. I couldn’t put them all together at first. Had my entire morning been a part of a dream all along?

I barely registered that I was outdoors. The rain poured harmlessly on me, cool at first, then warming like sweat when it ran down my back and through tears in my white undershirt. Had I fallen asleep in the yard? I lifted my head.

I wasn’t in my yard at all. I was at the top of a canyon somewhere, tall rock all around me and my body lying in the middle of a thin, open path. I sat up quickly, water falling from folds in my shirt. Everything was dark under the heavy clouds but even then I could tell I was far from home.

Something itched on my right hand. The ring was still there.

I was on my feet in an instant, the lethargic feeling dashed from my bones. I remembered! Brother James had handed me over to the Guardians. And now I was outside? Had something gone wrong, or had I escaped them somehow but couldn’t remember it? I’d already had enough experience with these Guardians to know I should get away while I could. I stumbled ahead in a stupor.

The opening in the rocks was not a path at all, but a sudden cliff drop-off that had been hidden in the mist. I came upon it too quickly to catch my balance and slipped as my shoes hit the wet rocks.

I fell over the edge.

For a moment I tumbled into nothing, unable to hold my balance, arms rushing in front of me to catch my fall. But then I wasn’t falling any longer. I found myself floating in midair, feet dangling inches away from the edge and an unfathomable distance from the rock-covered valley below. My hands were still frozen in front of me: hands now covered in silver scales.

The scales brushed against each other, feeling strangely natural. My hands simply trembled before me, some unfamiliar sensation coursing out of them that caused me to remain afloat. The energy came from the tops of my hands and burst invisibly through my skin and bones and out the other side with my palms. I was carried backwards to my feet again and dropped heavily to solid ground.

The moment I was safe again, the silver scales sudden drew back, hiding themselves beneath my skin as if they’d never been there at all. In seconds, I had once again returned to normal, except for my heart pounding louder than the rain. My hands were still out, frozen in the motion I’d have been found in if I’d tumbled to my death.

I shook. Was I still dreaming? I couldn’t be. I’d already awoken, and that sensation—that real, unmistakable feeling of something within me, fresh and powerful like the beating of a new heart.

“Try not to die so quickly,” I heard a male voice behind me. I spun around and my hands reacted again, the silver scales bursting forth in the same way they had seconds before. This time, however, ten long, curled silver claws slid from my fingers, bursting from the cuticle and covering my nails like armor with razor-sharp ends.

I don’t know what scared me more: the claws, or the person I saw across from me.

“You!” I gasped. I could hardly believe my own eyes—the boy who’d appeared in my nightmares was now sitting in front of me, deep in the shadow of the high stonewall beneath a tree that left him in a dry circle. His clothes were far more modern than before: a black tank top that left his muscled arms exposed, and faded blue jeans above navy-blue Converse scuffed by dirt stains. His hair was still long and black, tied behind his shoulders. There was a silver ring on his finger, exactly like mine. Not to mention the most unusual thing about him, which frankly was beginning to lose its novelty: silver scales on his hands and long claws on his fingers.

The moment I saw the silver, I panicked and stepped back. He looked at me and I at him, neither of us able to speak at first. Then, as if judging me no threat, he leaned back again, and the claws and scales withdrew back into his skin.

“I’m Thad,” he said calmly. “Stop that before you hurt yourself.”

“Did they send you to kill me?” I demanded, and at this accusation my fingers twitched. I wanted them to stop but I wasn’t controlling them, their movements involuntary.

Thad shrugged.

“I sure hope not,” he said. “You’ve been laying there for hours and I haven’t sliced you to bits. I’d be the worst assassin the world has ever seen.”

He regarded me with a slightly amused, crooked smile. I didn’t know how to respond to that, except to feel stupid. My claws retreated again, as if they could sense there was no danger. I tore my eyes from him slowly, looking down as they shriveled back and the scales vanished with them.

Impossible…

But too real for me to deny.

I studied Thad but was unable to voice any of the questions that I had—questions that only continued to compound.

Thad pushed himself up from his slouch and dusted his hands on the knees of his jeans.

“Maybe I should have left you back there,” he said in reflection. “I’d get a whole lot more appreciation from those Guardians.”

“I…I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing hard. “I just don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know who you are.” I stopped, correcting myself. “Actually I do. You’re the guy from my dreams.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard that from another guy,” he murmured.

I wasn’t amused, even though Thad was fighting valiantly to end the heavy air between us. I was so confused that I didn’t know which reaction to go with, so I remained stuck, like a robot shutting down from too many commands.

He gestured to a dry spot next to him.

“You want to get out of the rain at least?” he suggested. As he spoke, he reached into his pocket for something, but finding that it wasn’t there, he glanced to his wristwatch swiftly.

“I’d give it about ten more minutes,” he said. “Then we’ve got to run. Just enough time to figure out how we both got into this mess.”

He tapped the dry spot again. “Come on, just a few minutes. I’ve been running all over the place trying to save you in time.”

I relented, but more because I felt that my knees would soon give out if I didn’t sit. I still wasn’t sure if I could trust him, but he had made a good point: I’d have been dead if he wanted me that way. I sat an arm’s length from him and shivered.

“What do you mean you saved me?” I finally mustered up the courage to ask. He huffed.

“I mean if I’d been a few minutes late, both of us would be dead now,” he replied. “You think that monk was keeping you in that room waiting for your mother to arrive?”

I twisted my lips up wryly. I could recall most of it clearly and Thad was right. Why wasn’t I with the Guardians, locked up wherever they would have taken me after Brother James had handed me over? The sounds flooded back too: the loud scuffle and the gunshots. I began to realize that all that fighting hadn’t been between Brother James and a Guardian after all. Thad had appeared instead.

“I must’ve given that monk quite a fright, tearing down the door with these,” he said, flexing his claws. “He shot himself in the head when he saw me.”

Obviously, Brother James had thought Thad was a Guardian come to kill him and collect me. I didn’t know whether to feel sympathy for him or to think that it’d served him right. It was too late now, though. Whoever was returning to the church to pick me up would be greeted by yet another corpse—the latest in a long line.

“I—I don’t even know where to start,” I stammered. “How do you even know who I am? And how’d you know I was in there?”

“Psh,” Thad said with disgust. “Those are all the same questions I have and I was hoping you could answer.”

I didn’t have any.

“Look,” he said. “Give up now on getting the answers you want. They’re not going to appear. I’ve already tried.”

He scratched the knees of his jeans, looking blankly toward the cliff edge. “That was the first thing I learned, when the dreams started…”

So, he’d had them as well. I shifted a bit.

“You sure act like you know me, though,” I noted.

“Yeah?” he said. “I guess you’re right. I kinda feel like I do. Enough to risk my life to save yours, at least.”

He checked his watch again. As he did, I couldn’t help but notice that even the skin around his ring was still bearing the light red inflammation, like he’d gone through the same transformation as I.

“Did it all happen the same for you?” I asked, now letting my curiously take over. I looked down to where my scales had been but now the skin was smooth and unbroken, as if it had simply healed itself back into a human disguise.

“I’d think so,” he said. “If you mean the dreams and the ring that just came out of nowhere. The claws happened a day before my seventeenth birthday.”

“My birthday is tomorrow,” I said.

“Of course it is,” he replied matter-of-factly. “That’s why they’re so desperate to make you a dead Michael.”

Did growing claws make a person impervious to empathy? I’d known this Thad person for ten whole minutes and I already wanted to shake his hand in thanks and punch him at the same time.

“Just think like one of them,” he said. “You know what Guardians are. Do you think they’d let anyone who can fight them stay around?”

“It’d help if I knew what any of that meant,” I said.

“It’s because you’re a threat,” he said insistently, as if I was missing some obvious point. “You haven’t realized it yet? You’re one of them. You are a Guardian.”

He looked at me like I should have expected his answer, as if somehow I should have known that this was coming. But nothing so far had prepared me for it, and suddenly I was unsure if anything surrounding me was real or if Brother James’ chemicals were still at work.

“Me?” I said, the fright causing my voice to rise in pitch. An unwanted feeling began to creep its fingers up the back of my neck. I wanted to say he was lying but I couldn’t form the words.

“You have claws and scales,” he said, gesturing in my direction. The proof was attached to me, after all. My insides didn’t feel any different. I still felt like a human, and my mind still functioned in the same way it always had. In fact, the very mind that should have been helping me understand what he was saying was busy fighting against what appeared to be the inevitable truth.

“What do you think Guardians are?” Thad asked. “You’re not human, that’s for sure. At least not entirely.”

I wanted to curl up into a ball and block out his words, that flippant, uncaring tone like this was all so natural when absolutely nothing about it was. I realized why he bothered me so much. I’d just lost control over everything. Or rather, I’d found out that I’d never had any control to begin with, but had been a pawn in some greater game. And Thad, irritatingly calm, appeared to have already come to terms with all this.

“How did you find me?” I asked. The more answers I could get, the more I’d feel like I was actually sitting on solid ground.

Thad gave an unexpected grin.

“Ah,” he stated. “The start of all of this mess for me. If only I didn’t know.”

Again, his fingers twisted at the ring, almost like he wished he could remove it but it simply wouldn’t budge. “Don’t even ask me how. It started right after the dreams and I still didn’t know who you were. Then all of a sudden, I woke up—on my seventeenth birthday—and I had this bizarre feeling. Like I had to find you.”

It felt like he was leading up to some big joke, but he never reached the punch line.

He shrugged. “It was weird. I just knew where you were. I mean, I’m looking at you now so I know you’re right there. But at the same time I know you’re there.”

He gestured at me. “I could go a mile the other way and still now you’re right there. I could stand and point to you from where I was back in that white room they had me in. That’s why the Guardians took us.”

He looked up, gaze stronger now. “They wanted us to take them to you. Luckily, that gave them a reason to keep us alive.”

I blinked. His positivity had only suffered a tiny crack as he spoke of his own possible demise. But I’d caught something unexpected in his words.

“Us?” I echoed. “There are others?”

He nodded. “Yes. Don’t you remember? Wasn’t Callista in your dreams too?”

“She’s alive?” I burst with dismay. Keeping my outbursts in check had become an impossible task.

“I read in the newspaper that she’d died in a fire,” I blurted. Thad gave me a quizzical look.

“Obviously you’ve been doing some research,” he said, a little impressed. “But no. That was a cover-up. Guardians have had her for weeks, I think.”

“So she’s alive?” I said again, unwilling to believe until I was certain.

“I hope so.” His face fell slightly. “Last time I saw her she was…”

His voice trailed off, and I couldn’t help but notice that his shoulders sagged lower, and the nonchalant gaze changed to something more of concern. That wasn’t exactly the answer that I’d wanted, but for some reason I felt my insides soar because it was far more than I’d had earlier. She was actually alive somewhere? All this time? Of everyone I’d tracked down so far, this girl had always seemed the most important. Finding out that she hadn’t died was like erasing a history book chapter and starting over—a mental rewriting of what I’d thought was concrete truth.

Nervously, Thad glanced at his wristwatch again. Then he stood abruptly, the rain already having slowed from before, and started toward the cliff edge so that he could see over. He studied the horizon, checking his watch yet another time.

“You know the Guardians will go back to the church and find I’m not there,” I said. “That’s if they haven’t already.”

I didn’t know what to do next. I’d reached the end of my plans long ago when I’d found the priest, and everything after had only been venturing further into the dark. Intuition told me I could trust Thad, as strange as that seemed. He looked up from his watch.

“Don’t worry yet,” he replied. “Callista made a plan.”

“And what’s that?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but instead something else chose to respond. It came in the form of a dramatic, faraway explosion, with a burst of orange light flashing from the coastline. It made me jump, then a second later I heard an echoing roar like a bomb going off. Seeing a tall curl of black smoke heading for the sky, Thad smiled.

“That,” he said, “would be Callista’s plan.”

He leapt off the cliff edge. In that same second, the scales appeared on his hands once again, and he rose into the air a few feet as if there were gentle rockets at the bottom of his shoes. The motion caused water to sling from his clothes and into my eyes. His motion seemed as natural as walking.

“Come on then,” he said, hovering with his feet now at the level of my eyes.

“You still have a lot to explain!” I protested. It was a wonder I managed to speak at all.

“Well,” he replied, lowering himself a bit, “I could stick around and tell you everything, or we could go down and see what horrible thing Callista’s done.”

He shot up and away. I was left alone on the cliff, and watching him rise into the sky, I came to the rim and stopped. What did he really expect…he couldn’t actually mean for me to…?

I’d done it before but that’d only been by instinct. It had felt effortless. But I didn’t even know what I’d done or if I could do it again. The rocks below seemed so far away. I licked my lips, stifling a sudden urge to jump, as if even my body and mind were telling me to just do it, to just step over that edge, to let the air carry me…

I felt like a tiny child about to skydive out of a plane, a sinking feeling inside that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. But Thad beckoned me, and I looked up and saw his head blocking the sunlight that had just begun to clear the storm clouds. He looked impatient. So I jumped.

It was a stupid thing to do. I wasn’t close enough to the edge to clear it, so my heels ended up slipping on the end, my arms waving frantically. I was entirely unprepared for having nothing beneath my feet, falling like a stone toward jagged rocks and trees. I gasped because I couldn’t gather enough air for a shout, feeling the scales emerge on my hands again…

I was caught by the air.

With a whoosh, my plunging dive turned in the opposite direction, my body soaring up like I’d leapt out of a swing. Fear had pressed my arms to my sides, but though I trembled, I continued to rush up with such grace that I knew I was not consciously controlling my motion. One second I was falling, the next I was floating.

Air ruffled my hair as I rose, feet and arms still pressed tightly against my sides because I was too fearful to move them, afraid that any motion would upset whatever force held me aloft. And yet it all seemed so normal. So natural. I simply wanted to go closer to Thad and with less than an active thought, my body started toward him like an arrow.

The motion was smooth and I closed in on him in seconds. Thad regarded me with approval.

“I can’t promise I won’t make fun of you for that sound you made,” he said. When stopped, our bodies righted themselves, so that our feet dangled below us. Thad’s hands were out as if even he was still getting used to balancing in the air. I struggled to get a feel for what I was doing. When I willed myself to climb an inch, I did, and when I turned my head to look back at the cliff that I’d been on moments before, my body turned midair to follow.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” Thad said. “Let’s go see Callista.”

We headed toward the blue as the distant black smoke continued to crawl its lazy way into the sky.