The Energy Room (The Elementum Trilogy) (4 page)

Infinite whiteness was all that surrounded me, but it lacked the feeling of constraint associated with the walls of The Facility. It was warm and welcoming, almost shielding in nature. I was home.

My entire being was engulfed by the comfort of an over-sized blue chair. If I could do nothing but stay in that one spot for the rest of my life, I would have been content. Stemming out from me in a circle were five other chairs, each one a different color of the rainbow. All of the others were empty, except for the yellow one two seats to my right. A pair of fiery, copper eyes gazed at me from behind a thick book, locks of straight, dark hair falling around them.

“What are you doing here?” Nadia asked nervously, setting her book on her lap. I looked around for a moment, trying to steady myself.

“
I passed out,” I said, cradling my head in my hands. It was so comforting to see my bare wrists without any sign of hindering shackles.

“
Are you… are you okay?” Nadia asked, placing her book in her chair as she stood to move closer to me.

Nadia was a beautiful girl, and her voice had the unique ability to turn your innards into gooey mush. Her flawless, dusky skin made her eyes seem as though they might burst out of her face and engulf the room in flames. She was truly one of my oldest friends, and one of my only connections to the outside world. Unfortunately, she had been in a coma since she was very young, which was why she was in the Room during the middle of the day; she was always in the Room.

The Energy Room was where our minds went when we were unconscious, at least that’s how we understood it. There were six of us, and we had been going to the Room for as long as any of us could remember. It was our true home, and our true family. The Room gave us everything we needed when we were there, everything we were deprived of on the outside.

After being together every night of our lives for nearly eighteen years, we knew all there was to know about each other, yet we knew very little of ourselves. We were all born on the same day of the same year; we were all adopted; and we were all able to do things that normal people shouldn’t have been able to do. While the Room was able to provide us with the knowledge of nearly any subject we could ever crave to learn, it was unable to tell us anything of who we were. That, or we simply hadn’t been asking the correct questions.

All of the information The Facility had been after for the last seventeen years existed in a room that they could never access. If William ever found out that the secrets he desired were so close, yet so far… he would be more furious than a particularly disgruntled cat in an ugly holiday sweater.

“
I’m fine,” I said quietly, rubbing my eyes as I remembered the stabbing pain that had riddled them just moments before. I checked frantically, finding no apparent wound anywhere on my head. With a sigh of relief, I found that I hadn’t been shot. What had caused the pain, then? I didn’t know enough about medical stuff to be sure, but the hypochondria in me suggested that I had developed a brain tumor or, even more likely, there was a parasite living in my head.

Nadia reached her hand out to me questioningly. I nodded, and met her hand with mine. I watched calmly as her coppery eyes clouded over, allowing her to experience the recent events that had led to my unexpected visit to the Room.

There was only silence for a moment, as Nadia’s eyes cleared and she withdrew her hand. We stared at each other, both pondering the happenings of my day.

“
Is he—” she began reluctantly.

“
I don’t know.” I cut her off, already knowing she would ask about Al.

“
What would that mean?” Nadia questioned, retreating to her yellow chair, “If he was?”

I gazed blankly at the beautiful girl a couple seats away from me. The girl who, as far as any of us had been concerned, was one of only six of our kind. We had all been so sure that we were the only ones.

“Nothing,” I said softly. “It wouldn’t mean anything, because he’s not.”

Nadia sighed with frustration. When she was four years old, she had been in the car accident that resulted in her coma. Since then, she had spent nearly every moment of her life in the Room. There had been a few instances when she faded back into reality, each time only long enough to see her adoptive mother sitting by her side. We assumed that her body was still showing brain activity, and that was why nobody had pulled the plug on her. While our room was comforting, and provided us with nearly anything we could ever hope for, Nadia was stuck, like someone who had gotten onto the wrong side of the mafia and ended up at the bottom of a river, feet hopelessly secured in concrete blocks. Her only human connections fading in and out on a daily basis was far more agonizing than any test or procedure that had been performed on me at The Facility. We all
felt
alone on the outside, but Nadia was truly isolated. Proof of others like us in the outside world would have given her some faith that she wouldn’t spend the rest of her life confined to the unending canvas of the Room.

“
You’re fading,” Nadia announced, having been staring at me the entire time.

I looked at my hands to find that they were, indeed, translucent. I was coming to in the real world, and being forced to leave the room.

“We’ll talk about it tonight,” I promised.

A moment later, I opened my eyes to see Eddie’s worried, but ecstatic, face a few inches from mine. Whatever he had used to bring me back into consciousness left a horrible, metallic smell in my nostrils. I sat up slowly, grasping at the large bump where my head had aggressively introduced itself to the metal walkway.

“Wow. Ow.” I was irritated, and somewhat amused, by the size of the bump.

“
How do you feel?” Eddie asked, wrapping a blanket around me.

“
Like I almost froze to death, then knocked myself out on a metal walkway,” I exclaimed, waving my hands around in a failed attempt to shoo away the people who had gathered around me.

“
Oh, good.” Eddie smiled, patting me on the shoulder.

As Eddie stood up, I noticed his shoes were missing. I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion, wondering why he would have taken his shoes off. My question was answered soon enough, when he bent over at the end of the walkway to pry his frozen shoes from the frosty metal. At that point, I realized I was still freezing, half covered in icicles, and various parts of my skin were an unhealthy shade of blueish-purple.

One of the nice medic fellows checked the bump on the back of my head, and assured me that I would be alright.

“
You might want to take care of that frostbite, though,” the other medic said indifferently, pointing at my feet.

I cringed as it was brought to my attention that about fifty-percent of my toes were a nasty, blackish color. I poked one of them lightly, but felt nothing. Wiggling was out of the question. Those little piggies would not be going wee-wee-wee anywhere, not in their current state.

I placed my hands an inch or so above my feet, and closed my eyes. A white ball of light dropped from my palms, encircling my toes, as I envisioned my body healing itself. I opened my eyes, watching the toes slowly return to their normal, pale color, nodding in satisfaction as I wiggled them wildly.

Even though everyone had cleared to leave me sit alone on the warming walkway, I felt eyes piercing the back of my head. I discreetly looked around the room, until my gaze was met by those arctic, blue peepers. Al’s face was still void of emotion, but I could sense that his mind was racing. I watched intently, as Eddie whispered something inaudible into the young psychologist’s ear. Al nodded, and followed one of the security guards out of the room, into the elevator, and out of sight. I wondered if what he had seen was too shocking, if he had decided to turn down the job. I wondered if he would leave. I wondered if they would
let
him leave.

“
Angie, good work!” Eddie exclaimed, dragging me out of the little space in my mind that only contained worry. “Really, it was extraordinary.”

“
Thanks.” I smiled weakly.

The frozen towers were planted sturdily in the solid ice of the water tank. They surrounded me like a beautiful, diamond castle, if diamonds could melt in a room where the thermostat had been turned up to about 90 degrees. It would be a lie to say that I wasn’t proud of myself.

Ice had always been my downfall. I could create a devastating tornado with nothing but a draft. I could turn the flame of a candle into a wildfire. I could start a monsoon with a cup of water, but the most progress I had ever made with ice was frosting over some lemonade at a Village cookout. Rather, I could do all these things when the employees of The Facility thought it was appropriate. I frowned at the green lights that had returned to my Electro-Cuffs

Once upon a time, when I was about twelve years old, I got feisty and tried to flood William’s office in a pathetic attempt at escape. That was when the Electro-Cuffs were brought into the picture. All of the information that had been collected from every test ever done on me was uploaded to a server linked to the shackles. Small changes in my body chemistry allowed them to determine, without delay, the exact moment I began to use my abilities. The response was a painful electric shock, severe enough to deter me from ever getting too frisky again. Of course, there were ‘minor malfunctions’ when the Electro-Cuffs were first developed. ‘Malfunctions’ like accidentally electrocuting everyone in the swimming pool on the fourteenth floor. Fortunately, those issues were resolved rather quickly. When the Electro-Cuffs were developed was also when they implemented the intricate security system; cameras in nearly every corner, microphones and speaker systems in every room. I hadn’t been able to
really
talk to Eric for almost six years.

Coincidentally, that was about the same time William became extremely busy and stopped overseeing my lab-runs. If he needed to converse with/at me, the communication almost always took place over the speaker system. I thought it was wildly amusing that the old man who was in charge of the entire Facility, was apparently frightened of a twelve-year-old girl.

“I’ll see you at dinner tonight?” Eddie asked, once again pulling me out of my own mind.

“
Of course. Do you, er… do you happen to know if Al will be there?” I inquired, forcing myself to my feet.

“
I’m not sure. He went off to talk to William, but I don’t know if he’s decided whether or not he will stay,” Eddie replied, a glint of empathy shining in his eyes as he smiled.

I nodded in understanding and started toward the glass door, still clutching the blanket around my shoulders.

“Oh, Angie… would you mind? Emmy will kill me if she finds out I’ve ruined another pair.” Eddie stopped me, holding up his dripping shoes in a questioning manner.

I snickered, and took the damp shoes into my hands. Eddie nodded to an older man at one of the computers, who was responsible for turning my Electro-Cuffs on and off on that particular day. After the red lights returned to my wrists, I closed my eyes with a grin. The water streamed off of the shoes like tiny rivers bending through a leather forest. It splashed onto the floor, as if a minuscule rain shower had developed beneath them. Eddie bowed in thanks as I handed back the bone-dry loafers, the little, green light appearing back on my wrists with an omnipotent flicker.

“See you tonight, Eddie,” I said, making my way out of the lab, and finally back up to my small apartment, where I thought over every detail that had managed to cram itself into half a day.

I had not found any solace in pondering the possible outcomes of Al’s decision. If he had decided to leave, it seemed improbable that they would let someone who had just witnessed one of the world’s best kept secrets back into the public.

I was never sure of what happened to the former employees of The Facility when they decided to leave. I had asked William about it when I was younger; I wanted to know what happened to my first psychologist. He had been a relatively older fellow, and never seemed to really approve of my captivity. There was a period of about three days where I hadn’t seen him, which was odd considering I had seen him nearly every day of my life up until then. On the fourth day, I was introduced to my ‘new’ therapist, with no explanation as to what had happened to Dr. Holk. The only information William had allowed me was that Dr. Holk had decided to ‘retire’. As an experienced liar myself, I was able to instantly conclude that Dr. Holk had, most definitely, not decided to retire.

If Al decided to stay, he would at least be safe from the unknown, most likely grim, outcome of the previous option. But he would also be subjecting himself to a hectic world, which revolved around one dishonest and distrustful freak of nature. He would never be able to see or speak to his friends or family, thanks to the very strict privacy policy The Facility observed. And if my small intuition that he was somehow connected to my kind was true, there was a huge risk that The Facility would find out. There was no saying what the outcome of that particular situation would have been, but it probably would have been incredibly traumatic.

I hoped, against the odds, that Al had decided to leave, and that he had been allowed to go back to his normal life. Maybe they could have performed some sort of brainwashing thing that replaced his memories of the day with recollections of something normal; like gardening, or an Alcoholics Anonymous retreat.

Thoughts raced through my mind as I made my way down to the sixteenth floor for dinner at Eddie and Emmy’s house. The elevator doors opened to the seemingly perfect town just as computer-generated nighttime was beginning to fall. The fake Sun was low in the fake sky, and the fake half-Moon was starting to show its fake face. I chuckled to myself, thinking that that about summed up mostly everything at The Facility;
fake
.

I waved to Dr. Helmsworth, who could always be found reading a book of poetry on his front porch at about the same time every night. He was one of the few folks living alone in a Neighborhood. Most of the scientists had brought their families, or started families at The Facility. Dr. Helmsworth, however, believed that subjecting a family to a sheltered life of seclusion was unfair. I was inclined to agree with him, but felt a strong sense of sadness knowing that the old man had always lived alone, and would eventually die alone, most likely in The Facility. Even though Dr. Helmsworth had been single-handedly responsible for the development of my Electro-Cuffs, we had always gotten along quite well.

I hung my head as I continued on past identical houses with identical fences and yards. Walking up the path to Eddie’s door, I felt the warm breeze on my face. I thought of the younger children living in The Village, and wondered how they would feel when they eventually found out that they were prisoners of a company that their parents had, for whatever reason, decided to work for. I wondered how many of them were already aware that their lives were so abnormal, unnatural, fake. I wondered how many of them would ever be aware of those things.

All thoughts previously crowding my head were immediately erased as I opened the front door to be greeted by a pair of cheerful, arctic eyes. Al had decided to stay, and appeared to be very satisfied with his decision, as he helped set the dining room table for dinner. He grinned at the temporary statue I had become.

Eric, who was helping to set the table, took a break from glaring angrily at the new psychologist, in order to meet me with a beaming smile.

“
Hi there, Slushy!” Al called with a wink. He was definitely taking to the whole ‘freak of nature’ thing better than any of the previous shrinks.
Suspicious.

Al’s comfortably familiar attitude toward me caused Eric’s face to turn a shade of scarlet I had never seen on a human before. Out of, most likely, jealousy, Eric moved to kiss me on the cheek. I started to lean away out of impulse, but quickly caught myself and bitterly allowed him to express his public display of affection, keeping my eyes trained on Al. The therapist’s face was unwaveringly content. Not knowing how to respond to Eric’s unexpected act of fondness, I patted him awkwardly on the head.

“Oh hi, Angie. Congratulations on the lab-run, today!” Emmy cooed warmly, rounding the corner with a tray full of delicious-looking side dishes.

“
Thanks!” I smiled, putting my reservations about the men of the room on the back burner. “Can I help with anything?”

“
I think we’ve about got everything taken care of, sweetie,” Emmy said, standing back with her hands on her hips to look at the table full of scrumptious foods. “We’re just waiting for Eddie to get home.”

No sooner was his name mentioned, than Eddie walked through the front door, soaking wet from his hair to his shoes. We all stared at him, mouths agape.

“I fell in the water tank, again,” Eddie explained, though no one had asked.

I shook my head, snickering as he plopped his drenched shoes on the mat next to the door.

“Do I even want to know how you managed to do it this time?” Emmy asked, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

“
I sincerely doubt it, dear,” Eddie replied, hanging his head in embarrassment as he shamefully exited up the stairs to dry himself off.

“
Is that a common event around here?” Al inquired, setting the last plate on the table.

“
More common than it should be,” Emmy huffed, picking up the saturated shoes for examination. Her blonde locks bounced angrily with her bobbing head as she walked the shoes to the ornate bronze trash can in the kitchen.

“
Is she really mad?” Al asked in a cautious whisper. I replied only with a smirk.

Emmy returned with a dry towel to clean up the drips on the dark, hardwood floor. She muttered angrily to herself, dropping to her knees to mop up the mess.

“We’re not going to let this
dampen
our evening, are we?” I joked.

Emmy shot me an irritated look at first, but her expression quickly turned to one of amusement. All presence of hostility was eradicated from the air of the room, and was replaced with light-hearted laughter.

Upon Eddie’s return in a mostly-dry state, we all sat down to enjoy a lovely dinner and conversation. I didn’t get to have many ‘getting to know you’ discussions at The Facility, as most of my therapists weren’t very fond of letting their patient ask the questions, and we didn’t often get new residents. Still, I found the average ‘I’m a Taurus, and my favorite color is potato!’ conversations to be rather detached and irritating.

“
Where are you from, Al?” Emmy asked, loading tuna casserole onto her plate.

“
I was born in Maine, but I’ve been living in New York City for the last seven years,” Al responded in between bites of food.

“
I suppose they will be setting you up in The City, then?” Emmy questioned curiously.

“
That was Mr. Slate’s suggestion, but I asked to be placed on the eleventh floor,” Al replied. At this, Emmy and Eddie shot each other interested looks.

“
That is generally for lower level employees. The apartments on eleven aren’t very, er… accommodating,” Eddie explained apprehensively.

“
I shared a studio apartment with five other people while I was in college. I’m sure it’ll be alright.” Al laughed, taking a sip of water.

“
You’re awfully young to be a psychologist, aren’t you?” Eric accused from the seat next to me.

“
Eric, don’t be rude.” Emmy snapped, eyeing her son in the way one might glare at a dog that was caught chewing on the bedroom rug, which might have been a family heirloom brought over from the old country by Great-Aunt Bertha.

“
What? I’m just making an observation. He’s at least twenty years younger than any of Angie’s other shrinks.” Eric defended himself aggressively.

“
It’s okay, he’s right. Honestly, my family pushed me pretty hard to excel. I graduated high school at sixteen, with offers of full scholarships to a few different schools. I only went to college in New York so I could stay with my aunt and uncle until I was eighteen, then I moved in with some friends. I am the youngest person in the United States to have earned my type of degree,” Al divulged openly.

“
I guess that explains why you were offered a job at The Facility,” Eddie said, impressed.

“
Yeah, that explains it,” Eric muttered sarcastically, only to be silenced by the sharp jolt of my elbow in his ribcage.

“
Well, welcome to the team, Dr. Waldreck, and know that you are always welcome in our home,” Emmy said kindly, eyes glimmering with a hint of empathy.

“
Thank you, I appreciate that,” Al said gratefully. “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you guys from?”

Eddie cleared his throat discreetly. I really couldn’t tell if he was signaling to his wife about something, or if a piece of asparagus had gone down the wrong tube. As he grasped at the gray and red hair on top of his head, I quickly realized it was neither, rather annoyance at the story Emmy seemed absolutely ecstatic to tell.

“Oh, we don’t mind at all! It’s been so long since anyone has asked! Let’s see, Edward is from Nevada, and I’m from Oregon. We actually met at a science convention in Las Vegas when we were seventeen. I had snuck out with a couple of my girlfriends to go, and by the next day Eddie and I were married. Of course, those were different times. My parents were what you’d probably call hippies. They thought it was wonderful. Eddie’s parents, on the other hand, were horrified, and all but disowned him. So he came to live with us in Portland. He went on to get his degree in Biology, and I got mine in Botany. A few years after that, I was contacted by The Facility to develop a self-sustaining greenhouse. When they found out Eddie was an accomplished biologist, they asked if we would be interested in relocating for permanent employment. I was already pregnant with Eric, and we had been going through a rough financial period, so we jumped at the offer. We’ve been here ever since.” Emmy recited her story without seeming to have paused for a single breath. Eddie had been nodding in irritation the entire time.

“
Emmy… I think a simple ‘I’m from Oregon, and Eddie is from Nevada’ would have sufficed,” Eddie said, exhausted by his wife’s ramblings. He was met by her angry glare.

“
It’s quite alright, I think it’s interesting,” Al said courteously.

“
Then you’ll probably find this interesting, as well,” Eddie said, pausing for dramatic effect as Emmy’s eyes widened, “it wasn’t a science convention. It was a comic convention. There was a lot of spandex involved.”

Emmy’s cheeks burned as the rest of us chuckled around the table. The remainder of the evening was filled with arguments over who was a better captain of an intergalactic spaceship I had never heard of—I think it started with an ‘E’. The night ended rather abruptly, when Eddie nodded off into his mashed potatoes. I promised Eric that we would have lunch together the next day, before thanking Emmy for the wonderful dinner.

Al and I walked together along the dark, empty street. False stars glimmered on the screen high above our heads as we made our way toward the elevator at the end of the road. Silence loomed around us for a while, apparently becoming our new trend.

“
Why did you stay?” I asked suddenly, not even expecting the words to come out of my own mouth.

Al took a moment to dissect the question, and answered accordingly.

“It seems like a great opportunity,” Al replied simply, making sure not to meet my eyes. Lie.

“
There are all sorts of great opportunities that don’t involve cutting your family out of your life,” I said somberly.

“
That is true… But I don’t really have much family left,” Al said, a bit of emotion seeping into his voice.

“
I’m sorry,” I whispered sincerely as we reached the elevator.

Al said nothing, but threw an appreciative smile in my direction as we stepped into the large, white box. The small button that read ‘11’ lit up under my finger, the doors closing us in. We held our places in the quiet as the elevator shot upward, opening to a level that looked not unlike my own. White walls, white linoleum flooring, sickening fluorescent lights, and doors that led to apartments even smaller than the one I would be retreating to. Al stepped through the doorway, and took out a small piece of paper with ‘22’ scribbled on it, presumably his apartment number. As he turned around, I expected a handshake, perhaps an ‘It was nice to meet you,’ or an ‘I’ll see you in the morning, to reveal I’m actually one of the evil shrinks you hate so much,’ but the words he spoke, and the tone in which he spoke them, surpassed any expectation I could have ever had.