Freakling Read online

  Amma made a little bow. “Thank you. Let’s eat.”

  Using psi, she broke off a piece of lamb roll and floated it into her mouth. “Mmm. These are delicious.” She took another bite.

  Taemon’s belly growled. He hoped he wouldn’t have to remind her that she had to use psi for both of them. He was dying to get a taste of that lamb roll.

  “Oh, wow. Is that sage I’m tasting?” She took two more bites. “And that dough they roll it in. Skies, that’s good!”

  “Cha,” said Taemon. “It’s wonderful.”

  “Oh . . . sorry.” Amma broke off a small piece of Taemon’s lamb roll and floated it toward his mouth. He closed his eyes and let the flavor seep into his tongue. It was every bit as good as he remembered.

  “I think I’ll take another bite,” Taemon hinted.

  Amma held up her finger to motion for Taemon to wait. “Listen,” she whispered.

  “I don’t know what you’re worried about,” said a man sitting a couple tables over. “The Republik wants to be our ally.”

  “But what if that changes?” a woman said. “Can we trust them?”

  “They’re powerless. We’ll have the upper hand no matter what.”

  “But Solovar says different.”

  “And look where that landed him! On the run from the authority officers. His wife taken away.”

  The conversation lulled uncomfortably for a moment.

  “So, do you think we’ll get any psiball games this season? The Aqua team has to defend its title.”

  “It’s starting to get dark,” said Amma. She rose from her chair. “We’d better go.”

  Taemon stayed in his chair and looked at his barely nibbled lamb roll. “I’m not done yet.”

  Amma rolled her eyes. “Oh, for Skies’ sake.” She quickly broke the lamb roll into four large bites and floated them all at once toward Taemon’s mouth. When he snatched them with his mouth, he could hardly fit them all in.

  Moke was waiting for them in his backyard. “Where were you?” he asked. “I was starting to think you’d gotten caught!” His face looked a little pale.

  “Sorry. We wanted to check out the plaza, see if we could overhear anything useful. Hey, have you heard of a person named Solovar?”

  Moke nodded. “He used to be president of the trade guild association.”

  “Used to be?” asked Taemon.

  “Cha, used to be. Until he spoke out against the high priest, lost his job, and went into hiding. Now he’s kind of an underground leader for people who don’t like Elder Naseph.”

  “He sounds perfect,” Taemon said. “Do you think he would help us?”

  “Maybe,” Moke said. “But like I said, he’s in hiding. No one would tell me how to contact him. I tried to spread the word about our meeting; maybe he’ll hear about it and show up.”

  “So you set up a meeting?” Amma said.

  Moke nodded. “At an empty warehouse down by the West Wall. It’s used as a gambling salon now. I’m not sure how many people will actually come to talk to you, but it was the best I could do.”

  Amma looked surprised. “Gambling is legal here?”

  “No,” Taemon said. “At least it wasn’t when I left.”

  Amma raised her eyebrows and formed her lips into a silent “Oh.”

  The West Wall. Where the shacks were. It made sense. Where else would they find people who weren’t afraid of going against authority? The people there had little to lose.

  “Well, let’s get going,” Taemon said.

  Minutes later, Taemon and Amma followed Moke through a narrow space in front of a row of wall shanties. Taemon wondered if people had to use psi to keep their houses from collapsing.

  They turned down a dusty alley. Fading light from the sunset made the swirling dust look gray like fog. Picking his way around garbage and a delivery hauler missing its wheels, Moke led them to the warehouse, then used psi to open the sliding door.

  Taemon took a few steps inside the door and stopped. It was too dark to see anything. Once again, he couldn’t turn on the lights without psi. It was so incredibly annoying. “Will someone please turn on the lights?” he whispered.

  “I’m trying,” Amma said, stepping into the doorway beside him. “It’s not working.”

  “Just go in!” Moke’s voice cracked with nervous tension. “We don’t want anyone to see us standing around.”

  Taemon shuffled forward a few steps, but felt a strong reluctance to go any farther into that dark room despite Moke’s urging.

  “Is it empty?” Amma asked, her voice echoing. “No one showed?”

  “Not completely empty.”

  An authority officer stepped from the shadows, dressed in black and floating two pairs of psi cuffs in front of him. The lights switched on. Three other officers came into view behind him. “You’re under arrest for insubordination.”

  Taemon felt his arms being pulled behind his back. Why hadn’t he thought to use clairvoyance before he’d walked into the trap? Skies, it was the one thing he could do and he hadn’t even thought of it! How useless could he get?

  He looked at Amma. Her arms were pinned behind her back, too. The psi cuffs drifted toward them and fastened over their wrists. The cuffs were made of a thick metal, too strong to break even with psi and secured with a complicated lock that probably only the arresting officer knew how to release.

  “Moke turned us in!” Amma’s shoulder muscles tensed and she grunted with the effort. She was struggling against the strong psi that held her in place.

  “Do not resist,” the officer said.

  Taemon tried to look over his shoulder to see if Moke was still behind him. He couldn’t turn his head very far, but in the corner of his vision, he saw Moke walking away with the authorities. Taemon knew he should be angry, but he felt only sadness. Moke must have been furious over the psiball tournament after all. This was his way of repaying Taemon for that humiliating day.

  Amma yelled, “Add yourself to that weasel dung collection of yours, Moke!”

  “Put them in the hauler with the others,” the head officer said.

  Taemon and Amma were turned around roughly with psi and shoved through the open door. Taemon’s upper body was being pushed forward, and it was up to him to make his legs keep up or stumble face-first into the dirt. He was amazed that he and Amma made it to the hauler without falling.

  They staggered into the back of the hauler, which was nearly full with a dozen or so people sitting inside it.

  Taemon took a seat next to a man with white stubble on his chin and a weary look on his face. The hauler’s engine started, and they lurched forward.

  “You the kids from the colony?” the man next to Taemon asked, his voice low and gruff.

  Taemon nodded.

  “We heard about you. Came to hear what you had to say. But the offies got there first and arrested everybody.”

  “Moke ratted on us,” Amma spat.

  Taemon grunted. He was surprised that Moke had actually set up the meeting. If he was just going to turn them in, why bother getting others to show up? Maybe there was a reward for each arrest.

  “Young Moke?” someone else said. “Why would he do that?”

  Taemon sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  A woman leaned forward and whispered to Taemon, “Is it true what young Moke said? Did the high priest discover a library in the powerless colony?”

  Taemon nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “I have a brother there,” the woman said. “He got word to me about what happened. Said the True Son destroyed an entire building, nearly killed the family that lived there.”

  “That family was lucky,” Amma said, her voice strained. “They still have each other. But if the high priest goes through with his war, lots of people will die.”

  “People will die if we go against the high priest, too,” someone mumbled.

  “Maybe so,” Taemon said. “But thousands of people die in a war. Maybe hundreds of thousands. We
can’t let that happen. It’s not right for people with psi to use it for violence. Isn’t that why the powerless colony was established in the first place? Because being powerless makes you vulnerable?”

  The hauler came to a stop. The prisoners stopped talking while the hauler idled.

  “Destination?” a voice said from outside. It must be a gate guard.

  “Power plant,” the driver said.

  “Proceed.”

  The power plant. Taemon should have guessed. The power plant was also the jail where prisoners were forced to use their psi to turn the big turbines that made electricity for the city.

  When the hauler moved forward again, the white-whiskered man lifted his head. “We’re not so fond of the high priest ourselves. Or that cocky True Son. But what are we supposed to do? If you’ve got a plan that’ll work, you can count on us to help.”

  The other people in the hauler murmured their agreement.

  “I need to talk to Yens,” Taemon said.

  “The True Son? He doesn’t talk to anybody. Hardly ever leaves the temple.”

  “Can anyone here get me into the temple?” he asked. He held his breath. What would he do if they all said no? If he couldn’t get to Yens in time, how was he supposed to stop —?

  “I can,” the white-whiskered man said. “One of the temple guards is our man. But even if we get you in there, what makes you think he’ll listen?”

  “He’s my brother. I think he’ll at least let me talk to him.”

  Someone scoffed. “Cha. Right before he kills you.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Amma said. “We have reason to believe that if Taemon can get in to talk to his brother, we have a chance at stopping the war. There is a woman in the colony, Challis. She’s a seer. She knows things that no one else does. And she says we have to get Taemon in to see Yens if we want to stop the war.”

  The other prisoners in the hauler didn’t seem convinced.

  “I don’t know. . . .”

  “Why should we trust someone we’ve never met?”

  “Seems hopeless.”

  “Anybody else here have a better idea?” The bearded man spoke in a commanding voice. “We’re going to the power plant one way or the other. With a plan or without a plan. I say this boy’s plan is worth trying. They came all the way from the colony, for Skies’ sake. That shows gumption.”

  His words silenced the others.

  “If you can get me into the temple, I can try to persuade Yens against going to war,” Taemon said. “But first we’re going to have to escape from the power plant. Can anyone here describe the turbines inside the plant? Is there a way to dismantle them?”

  Luckily, the old man had been locked up before. Taemon pressed him for details, then leaned forward and began putting together a plan.

  “Everybody out!” the head authority officer yelled.

  Taemon jumped out first. He felt sorry for the older prisoners, who had a hard time getting out of the hauler with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

  They were marched into an industrial-looking building with metal walls and doors and turned over to the prison guards.

  “Well, well,” one of the guards said. “Look who’s back.”

  Panic flashed through Taemon’s mind. Did they know who he was?

  The guard grinned at the white-whiskered man. “Solovar’s come to pay us another visit.”

  So, the old man was Solovar. Taemon turned to Amma. “Interesting,” he whispered.

  “No talking!” said a guard.

  The guards crammed the prisoners into an open-air elevator. Taemon peeked over the edge, but all he saw was darkness below him. He wondered how far down it went. This time he thought to use clairvoyance; the elevator shaft went down deep. Deeper even than the lowest level of the building. It must have been made from an old well, because the bottom of the shaft was filled with water.

  “Keep your flaming head inside the elevator,” the guard said. “I hate it when I have to clean up blood.”

  Taemon shuffled away from the edge. “It sure looks like a big drop!” he said. He kept his tone light for the sake of the guards, but he hoped his fellow prisoners understood the significance of his observation.

  The elevator took them down. When the door opened, the guards herded them through a hallway and into a grimy room with no furniture. Rust marks streaked from the ceiling. It smelled like corn fuel. And it was hot.

  A man in dirty blue coveralls was waiting for them. He looked over the new batch of prisoners. “Fourteen of you, huh? Good. Now we have enough grunts to run all four turbines on the night shift.”

  One of the guards came forward to speak to the coveralls man.

  “Sir, two of these prisoners are from the dud farm and likely powerless. We have reason to believe the high priest has some interest in them, though. We’ve sent a runner to the temple for further instructions.”

  Coveralls man waved a dismissive hand at the guard. “I don’t give a fig. If the high priest wants ’em, he’ll have to come and get ’em. There’s big doings at the temple tomorrow, and it’s my head if the electricity runs out. We got one rule in this place: prisoners turn the turbines. If any of these grunts are powerless, the others will have to work that much harder.” He smiled and showed his stained teeth.

  Four more coveralls-clad people, two men and two women, came in. One of the guards removed the psi cuffs, passed each prisoner a dingy yellow jumpsuit, and told them to put it on over their clothes — with their hands.

  The other prisoners grumbled at the unnecessary humiliation, but for Taemon, the one without psi, it was a lucky break. He and Amma did as they were told. Their escape plan wouldn’t work if they didn’t make it into the turbine room, so they had to cooperate at least until that point.

  “What about the zipper?” one of the prisoners asked. “We need to use our psi for that.”

  Taemon studied the fasteners on the jumpsuit. The prisoner was right; they would need to use psi to zip them up. Skies! Why hadn’t he thought to teach Amma about clothing fasteners? She wouldn’t be able to zip her jumpsuit either. They’d be forced to ask one of the guards to zip it for them. Well, he wasn’t going to ask. He let the suit hang open in the front. Who flaming cared?

  Taemon looked around and noticed that everyone seemed to be staring at their zippers and frowning.

  “I think my zipper’s broken,” one woman said.

  “Mine too,” said someone else.

  One of the guards rolled her eyes. “Attention, idiots. We don’t use regular zippers in prison. Only the guards know how to zip up the suits. That’s so you can’t take them off whenever you want.”

  Another guard snickered. “And you’re going to want. Cha, you will.”

  Taemon felt the zipper fasten itself and the jumpsuit become snug around his chest.

  Next they were led back to the elevator, which took them deeper into the power plant. When the elevator stopped, Taemon got his first look at the turbine room.

  It was just as Solovar had described it: The room was about three stories high. Four big turbines stood like a row of huge tree trunks in the center of the room. Each turbine column looked to be about five feet in diameter. Five small prison cells had been built around each turbine like petals around a stem. A yellow-jumpsuited prisoner stood in each cell, watching the facing turbine column and using psi to turn it.

  The guard took Taemon’s group of prisoners across a narrow platform that went along the edges of the room halfway between the floor and the ceiling. “Get a good look at the turbines,” said the guard. “It’s not that hard to see how they work. In a couple minutes, you’re going to be down there turning them.”

  Taemon felt a pinch on his shoulder. “Pay attention!” said the guard. “I’m explaining how to do this. You stay in your cell and look at the turbine column in front of you. Use your psi to turn that column to the right. See them vertical stripes painted on the column? When those stripes are moving from the left to the right, i
t means the turbine is turning and we’re making electricity. We watch those stripes to see how fast you’re turning the turbine. Any questions?”

  Taemon cleared his throat.

  “You got a question?”

  “You explained the stripes on the turbine column,” Taemon said. “But what are the circles at the top?” He was pretty sure he knew what the fist-size circles high above the stripes were, but he wanted to be sure the others knew, too.

  “Those aren’t circles, idiot. They’re screws. The turbine has to connect to the generator shaft somehow, don’t it?” The guard shook his head. “Never mind. You grunts have no idea how this thing works. Just forget about the circles. They’re not important.”

  Taemon looked at the other prisoners. This was the plan they’d discussed in the hauler. Take the screws out without the guards noticing. Then the turbines would shut down, and that’s when they’d make a break for it.

  The guard was still talking. “Now, so you don’t think this is a resort of some kind and not a prison, I’m telling you that if one of us guards sees them stripes aren’t turning fast enough, we will provide you with a little incentive.”

  Taemon felt something sharp gouge his back. He flinched. Skies! What was that? He looked at Amma. She was frowning and rubbing her back.

  The guard laughed. “Feel that? Those are tiny barbs sewn inside your jumpsuit. Only a prison guard knows where they are and what they look like, so we’re the only ones who can move them with psi. Like I said, a little incentive.”

  Taemon let his mind wander inside the jumpsuit. Sure enough, he found dozens of little hooked disks between the jumpsuit’s double layer of fabric. Aptly, the disks had a tiny Jaguar symbol engraved on them. Clever. Unless you knew about the Jaguar symbol, you couldn’t envision the disks clearly enough to use psi on them. The plan just got a lot more painful.

  The prisoners were led down a staircase at the end of the platform.

  “Spread the new prisoners out,” the head guard said. “Make sure each turbine gets three or four fresh grunts.”

  One of the guards pointed to Taemon, Amma, and Solovar. “You three come with me.”

  They stopped at the first cell. With psi, the guard opened the cell door and shoved Amma inside.