The Search for Artemis - By P. D. Griffith Page 0,132

forward, palms upward, and waited for Landon to grab hold of them. “I’m going to start from the beginning.”

Landon cautiously placed his hands in hers. He wanted to understand. The moment his fingers touched her skin, Landon felt a tugging sensation coming upward from the base of his spine, and then saw flashes of white light until he was somewhere completely different.

Looking around, Landon realized he was in some small town’s police station. He sat in a chair beside an officer’s desk, watching as men with badges and guns clipped to their belts walked around the precinct with purpose. Two men, one in a crisp, black suit and the other in slacks and a blue oxford, were in a heated discussion down the hall, and one of them kept shooting Landon a quick glance.

Their voices could be heard from where he sat, but they were too muddled with the rest of the commotion going on around him for Landon to understand what they were saying. After a few more seconds of this, the man in the black suit turned away from the guy he was talking to and started down the hall toward him.

When I was seven, my parents were murdered. Celia’s voice resounded in Landon’s mind. Something like this had happened to him before with Dr. Pullman. He was somehow experiencing Celia’s memories, trapped in her mind, listening to her narrate her own life’s story. I wasn’t lying about that, but on that day, as I was sitting in a police station, a man in a black suit came and spoke to me. He said he was there to take me to where I belonged. Where he took me was a place similar to the Gymnasium. It’s called the Academy.

Landon’s thoughts interrupted. Wait! So there really is another place like the Gymnasium? He couldn’t believe what she was saying. There was another facility like the Gymnasium for psychokinetics.

Yes. But unlike the Gymnasium, the Academy truly does strive to do what they say. A hint of contempt could be heard in her voice as she referred to the Gymnasium. The Academy trains psychokinetics, like us, to control our abilities so that we can help humanity.

When I was brought there, I was a special case. Unlike everyone else, I hadn’t debuted yet. I was only seven. Her bodiless voice spoke emphatically in Landon’s head. But they let me stay anyways, and they raised me from then on. They clothed me, fed me, taught me what I needed to know, and when I was ten, it happened. A stupid boy, Aaron Hopkins, kept pestering me and pestering me. Then one day at lunch he wouldn’t leave me alone, and I finally snapped.

The precinct disappeared from Landon’s mind and a new setting emerged. Landon was now standing in a cafeteria, holding a tray in his hands picked clean of food. The room was much warmer than the Gymnasium’s cafeteria, with rich wooden tables running down it. It had vaulted ceilings, like a cathedral, and large stained glass windows ran down the walls, which ignited the room in bright light.

Standing in front of Landon was a boy of about sixteen. He was tall, freckled and had buzzed red hair. He seemed to be intentionally standing in Landon’s way.

“Aaron, can you please move out of my way?” Celia asked while Landon watched through her eyes. Realizing he was standing in the Academy’s cafeteria, Landon’s heart beat faster for a moment. It was the day of Celia’s apocratusis.

“Uh, I don’t think I can,” Aaron snidely replied.

“Come on, let me by.” Without a say in the matter, Landon moved forward in Celia’s body, but Aaron stepped in front of him, cutting off his path to the exit.

“I think you need to find another way out,” he said as he crossed his arms over his chest. Aaron towered over Landon. Celia was obviously quite short at this age. “This way’s for psy-kins, not orphans.”

At Aaron’s words, Landon felt her anger surge from within. Looking down, he could see that Celia’s hands clenched the edges of her food tray with such power that her knuckles turned white. Landon could tell that at any second, Celia was going to erupt. Aaron had pushed a serious button.

Then the table to Landon’s right suddenly burst into flames. Luckily there wasn’t anyone sitting at it, because that could have resulted in a serious tragedy. With the flames reflecting in his eyes, Aaron stepped back, and the few remaining students in the cafeteria stared