Chapter 10 #2
After breakfast, I make my way to the Operations floor; the elevator down there is the only one that offers access to the Temple. Someone must’ve upgraded my clearance level, because the thumb scan works for me this time, the elevator doors parting without delay.
Though it’s only my second time, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to stepping into the Temple, to this ghostly sensation of being engulfed by pure energy.
The eerie blue light guides me toward the marble circle and the shrine where the people of the Old Era worshipped their God.
If I were alive back then, I would’ve been incensed to find out that while the entire world was burning, my leaders were hiding in this mountain bunker.
Presidents, politicians, the ones wealthy enough to buy themselves a place here.
They hid like rats while their own people were dying in the Last War.
When I enter the main chamber, I spot Poppy again, meditating on a wide stone bench situated between two of the white marble pillars. She’s alone, sitting cross-legged, eyes closed.
At the sound of my footsteps, her eyelids pop open.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s fine. I was just strengthening my shield.” For once, she doesn’t avert her gaze, instead locking it on mine, steady and sure. That’s encouraging.
“You’re Poppy, right? I’m Wren.”
“I know who you are.” I don’t hear any hostility in her tone.
I want to ask her a hundred questions, but suddenly her body goes rigid. I glance over my shoulder to see Hawkins stalking toward us.
Without acknowledging the blond girl, he gives me a curt nod. “Ready?”
Poppy darts off before I can even say goodbye to her. Not a fan of Hawkins, it appears.
Rather than go to one of the alcoves, Hawkins straddles the bench previously occupied by Poppy, resting his forearms on his thighs. I sit down and mimic the pose.
He gets right to business, which doesn’t surprise me. Hawkins doesn’t seem like someone who enjoys small talk. Or talk in general.
“Kallister said you incited a woman to kill herself.”
Oh.
Okay.
Guess we’re getting right into it.
I swallow the shame that floods my throat. “I did, yes.”
“Did she resist?”
“Yes. Well, actually, no—at first, she didn’t realize I was in her mind.
Which I suppose makes sense now that I know Mods can’t detect a manipulator because there’s no electric shock.
” I pause, trying to get back on track. “She only realized what I was doing once her hand started to move on its own. That’s when her mind began to resist me.
I could feel her trying to push me out, to stop the command from taking hold. ”
“They fight hard,” he concurs. “It’s a survival instinct.”
“I can imagine. I’m surprised you agreed to let me practice on you.”
“I didn’t. I’m helping you harness gold, not letting you incite me.” Hawkins snorts. “Sorry, but I don’t know you yet, and I sure as shit don’t trust you.”
“Then how am I supposed to train in it?”
“You’re in luck,” he says, dripping sarcasm. “A lab rat offered themselves up.”
He means Gray, I realize. Kallister used that same phrase yesterday, referring to Gray as my “rat.”
I don’t know whether to be touched or call him an idiot for agreeing to let me practice incitement on him. Gray knows I have no control over it.
“But your rat is useless to you until you can harness,” Hawkins says. “Tell me what you do when you see the gold dust.”
I purse my lips. “When I was inciting the firing squad at my uncle’s execution, the gold was swirling in my head and distracting me. I was trying to maintain control of their minds, but the dust kept clouding my vision. I tried to clear it away—”
“That’s your issue. You don’t want to clear it. You want to gather it. What was the energy drain like?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Was your own mind resisting as hard as theirs?” Hawkins clarifies. “Were you tired? Weak? Headaches? Dizzy?”
“All of the above,” I say wryly.
“That’s what happens when you’re not harnessing the gold properly.
Or if you possess an ability that requires a massive amount of energy.
Corruption, for example. Adrienne has a perfect grasp of it, and she’s more than proficient at harnessing, but no matter how skilled she is, corrupting a mind will still drain her. ”
I nod slowly. “The night she corrupted the General’s mind, she could barely walk afterward. I practically had to carry her. She couldn’t even use telepathy for almost twenty-four hours.”
“Because it drained all her other abilities, too. It takes time for everything to recharge.”
“Why doesn’t that happen with incitement?”
“No idea. All we’ve been able to determine is that corruption is the most strenuous of the manipulation powers. Anyway. Sounds like every time you consciously attempt to incite, you try to push the gold away, right?”
“I guess?”
“That’s why you’re unsuccessful. You need the gold. Once you know how to harness it, you’ll be able to incite at will.”
“Can you incite at will?”
“Yes. It’s simple.” His tone is matter-of-fact, not smug. “Easy to do, easy to hold.”
“What do you mean, hold?”
Hawkins pushes a lock of dark hair off his forehead. This is the most animated I’ve seen him since we met. “Say I wanted to incite you to leave the Temple and grab me a coffee from the mess hall—”
“Wait, what? You can incite me when I’m not even in the room with you?”
Now he does look smug. “Like I said, easy. It’s similar to telepathy—the first time you establish the link, you need to be sharing the same space, right?
But after that, you can access that link from anywhere.
With incitement, think of it like…a leash.
You need to be in the same space to open a path, to harness the gold and capture their mind.
Once it’s been captured, you’ve created a leash from your mind to theirs, and as long as you can hold on to that leash, you can continue to incite the other person even if they leave your sight. ”
“What happens if you lose your grip on the leash?”
“Then it’s done. Their mind belongs to them again. And you can’t incite remotely. The incitement always needs to start with you sharing the same energy space.” He rolls out his shoulders, as if preparing for a fight. “Enough talking. Let’s harness. Go into my mind.”
I close my eyes, centering myself, then open a path and follow it into his mind.
“What do you see?” Hawkins asks.
Behind my eyelids, I see his shield, the negative frequency that protects his mind from intrusion. Just outside my field of vision, I glimpse what Uncle Jim always described as the hallway: the positive frequency you follow to establish a telepathic link.
“Pay attention to the energy around you. Block out the negative and positive waves. What’s left? What do you see?”
I strain my mind, trying to do what he asks. All I see is blackness. I hear a hum, though. Something else is there. I feel it. I…
“I see it,” I mumble. “The gold dust.”
It’s so faint, barely perceptible to the naked eye. Flickering in and out of my vision. The thinnest, most delicate sparks.
“Picture yourself gathering it up. When I harness, I visualize coiling the gold into a tighter and tighter ball until it’s something I can hold.”
I do what he says, reaching out to gather the gold, but it’s too elusive. I can’t for the life of me grab hold of it. Every time my fingers brush a gold strand, it floats away as if it’s being tugged by an invisible string.
Frustration rises inside me. “It’s not working.”
“Just keep trying.”
I try again, but it takes several more attempts before I even come close to touching the gold.
And then, finally, my fingertips brush it.
Excited, I eagerly close my fingers around it, trying to trap the gold inside my fist, but the moment I do, an uncomfortable shiver rolls through my arm and up my spine. I release my fist, and the gold dust flies away.
“I had it for a second, but I lost my grip,” I complain.
“Try again.”
That’s all I hear for the next hour.
Try again. Try again. Try again.
I grow increasingly frustrated at each failed attempt. I can almost grasp it, the slippery gold. Sometimes I’m even able to keep it in my palms for several seconds, until that peculiar shudder overtakes me, stopping me cold.
“You keep letting go too soon,” Hawkins says brusquely. “You’re scared of the sensation. Don’t be. Let it travel through you.”
“It doesn’t feel…right.” That’s the only word to describe it. It feels wrong when the energy is flowing through my body.
“If you weren’t supposed to use it, you wouldn’t have the power to do it. Try again.”
I tamp down my frustration and give it another go.
This time, I make actual progress.
Focusing all my concentration on the task at hand, I start gathering the dust, one wisp at a time. Excitement tickles my belly as the gold slowly becomes a bigger and bigger clump. I clench my fist around it, determined not to let it escape. My palms begin to feel hot. Tingling wildly.
“Unclench your fists.”
Hawkins’s voice distracts me. My eyelids open, causing me to lose my grip on the gold again. It disappears like smoke through my fingers.
“I was just starting to get it,” I grumble at him.
“No. I could see that you weren’t. You’re tensing too hard. Restricting the gold to one spot. That’s one of the reasons you’re not able to control it. You need to let it flow through your entire body. Here. Watch.”
Hawkins opens a path into my mind. He’s not trying to break through my shield—I’d feel the shock at the back of my neck if he were—but he is doing something.
I watch him in fascination. His forehead twitches a little, hinting at the mental strain transpiring behind his eyes.
His veins begin to ripple, liquid silver swelling through his arms. But it’s not just his arms. The silver surges in the veins of his hands, running up his throat, flickering across his collarbone.
I suspect his legs and chest are also glowing beneath his clothing.
Finally, the silver begins to ebb and his eyes open.
“Did you see? You want it to consume every inch of you. You expend less energy that way. Once you have the gold in your hands, let it travel to the rest of your body. When everything is contained in one spot, like your fists, for example, you only end up struggling to keep it in place. You’re not making the best use of the gold.
” His dark eyes pierce my face as he utters my new least favorite words. “Try again.”