36. Clark
THIRTY-SIX
CLARK
“Do not worry, Clark. Just be the person they need you to be. Steady, calm. Maya is with you, as is Thomas. They will remain on either side of you the whole time until Olly awakens.”
I mentally discarded the unnerving reality of having two shades with me as my comfort persons, and somehow tried to beam my thanks over to the group.
They must have either read my thoughts or the nod I also gave them was enough, because they nodded back in sync, and then filed out of the ballroom in line.
Or rather, attempted to file out of the ballroom.
The doors to the room slammed shut seemingly on their own, and I swear, I could smell the sea and wild roses as a strong breeze blew through the room.
I looked down at Olly’s motionless form, but there was the smallest trace of a smile on her face as she lay there, which I would swear was not there a moment ago.
The weather in the room began to pick up, the wind growing stronger and definitely coming from this stage.
It was starting to rain lightly in the room—at least it wasn’t snowing—and I would stake my life on that being actual sea spray hitting the edge of the stage.
As voices rose, I saw people...no, everyone starting to drop, one by one, and the paramedics losing their shit.
“It’s a hallucinogen in the air. It has to be!
Captain, it’s fucking raining in here, and a wild rosebush just sprouted up in full bloom by... ”
The paramedic dropped mid-sentence, and I heard pounding on the ballroom doors, and then all went silent, and I saw the tentacles of the mighty kraken that lived inside Olly’s mind.
I was underwater, completely submerged but with no fear of needing to breathe, like before, only this time the kraken carefully wrapped a tentacle around me, and pulled me toward its other...
captive? Guest? Thousands, maybe millions of teeny phosphorescent fish lit up the deep with their turquoise brightness.
Olly looked like she was coming around, and the biggest smile lit up her face, her hair floating around her, and making her look eerily gorgeous held in the arms of the great beast from the depths of her very being.
Then it happened.
The song of the ‘whales’ and the barking of the ‘seals’ filled my mind, and it was like something was being broken open inside my head, something that was there all the time, precious like an egg and just waiting to be hatched at the right time.
As I felt less and less connected to the strange underwater world around me, I watched Olly as the kraken’s tentacles lit up a bright gold, and it looked like being in space.
Darkness but with light from billions of suns peppered throughout.
I remembered then something Olly had said to me once that if there was an ocean inside her, the cosmos spun inside me.
Maybe my mind was impacting hers, transforming this to a shared space?
I watched in wonder as Olly’s eyes opened, and they were nothing but bright golden orbs of light, and light seemed to emerge from her whole body.
The light moved toward me quickly, like a wave of sorts, and I understood what that precious egg that cracked inside me was.
It was a gift from the kraken, the fiercest of beasts with the power to scrub the minds of everyone here of their psychic powers, and deposit them where they most seemed fit.
In other words, Olly’s subconscious had sucked dry the psychic abilities of every last person associated with The Organization—even the Antarctic team—and had taken those powers for our own.
My psychic powers, inherited from the Evans side of my family, were well and wide awake now, and, through Olly, had just been given a jolt of power stronger than I could understand or explain.
I thought of the array of abilities that had been present in that ballroom, and the thought that those powers had transmitted to myself and Olly seemed like an incredible obligation and a hefty responsibility.
I then remembered, with an intense jolt of fear, that in the waking world, Olly was about to give birth and maybe she already had.
I asked the kraken to please return me to the surface, to my own mind, and let me be there for the birth of Beatrice Rose.
In a not-so-surprising twist of events, I woke up completely dry on the stage, a paramedic looking down on me, and people were waking, one by one.
Olly and I had to get the hell out of Dodge, now.
We had about 900 people on hand who were probably pissed off at us, if they knew where their powers went.
Gods only know what happened while we were on our little under-the-sea adventure, and I heard an EMS member speaking into his radio.
“Captain, I don’t know what happened here, but I swear, some kind of chemical agent had to be released.
You don’t get over 900 people collapsing at once, and swearing they were practically at a beach when they did.
What are your orders surrounding containment?
” Containment! No way. Olly needed that caesarean section if she was to live.
Was this the sequence of events that led to why she was in no pictures of her and Beatrice?
I was ordered to essentially get out of the way by the paramedics, one of whom planted a hand on my shoulder and gave it a small push, and I swear I felt, but did not see, a small hand, slightly sticky, take my right and give it a squeeze, then start to pull me backwards.
It could only be one person: Maya, the lost daughter.
Present now but so far away most of the time.
I followed her lead, and did not consider how bizarre it must look for me to have one hand outstretched, holding what appeared to be nothing.
But holy fucking hell, there she was, like the painting come to life.
I tried not to dig too far into why I could suddenly see her, but I gripped her hand tighter and pulled her into my side, so I could bend down and kiss the top of her head. She giggled, and squeezed my hand back.
“Don’t worry, Clark. She won’t be like me.
Bea will live, and she’ll be an Evans one day, too.
” It would make sense if she knew what would happen, considering her mother’s strongest gift, before the...
the power-up, was foresight. I wondered how much of that was genetic and passed to Maya, and if so, why she didn’t need to draw it to see it happen.
She just spoke like a freaking Oracle, and there was power there in her voice if you really listened.
“Hey, kiddo, watch it with the spoilers,” I replied, and she giggled some more.
I wondered if she was dressed the way she was because she was emulating the painting, or if the painting had been how she appeared to Shepard.
She was wearing a black dress just past the knees, with teeny white flowers on it.
She had on black tights and black Converse high-tops.
There was a white collar peeking down her neck, and her long, dark hair was parted in the middle and done in braids, with black ribbons at the end.
She really did look like she was conjured from an old TV show, but her facial features and personality were all Olly.
This girl was Maya McLeod, through and through, even if she had a rather goth aesthetic, it suited her sweetness, somehow.
“We’re ready to go,” the EMS guy who had tried to push me backward said. “One of you can come with me, but I’m sorry, we don’t allow unattended children, so if you want to come, find a sitter for your kid and get down here in thirty seconds.”
I don’t think the EMS man saw Thomas appear out of thin air. I remembered how strong Thomas had been described to me, and I was glad for it, because we needed everyone on our side we could get today.
“It’s okay, I’ve got her,” Thomas said, with all the authority of an eighteen-year-old boy who was far wiser than his age.
I nodded to him, in silent thanks, and jumped off the stage, chasing down the stretcher Olly was on.
I saw they were on oxygen, and EMS had run an IV line into their right arm—practically their favourite hobby was pulling those out—and they were still unconscious.
The ride to the hospital was hell, but at least Halifax had an excellent hospital complex for women and children, including labour and delivery.
As we raced to the IWK Health Centre, I wished things could be a little bit like the movies, and I could sit in the back with Olly and hold their hand.
But instead I was in the front seat and white-knuckling the ride as the sirens wailed and the ambulance weaved through traffic that either couldn’t or wouldn’t move out of the way.
We had a tight squeeze with a Metro Transit bus, and almost ran over a pedestrian, but eventually, we pulled up to the hospital, and I thanked the gods we were all in one piece.
“You can jump out here, sir. Ask at the main information desk where she is, and they’ll tell you how to get to the most convenient waiting room.”
“Sorry, it’s they or them, as their preferred pronouns, not she or her.
Maybe you can have it noted on their chart.
” The paramedic nodded, then ran back to the stretcher, and as Olly was taken away from me, I realized that the former psychics of Table 16 were correct: Maya and Thomas were with me.
I didn’t understand how solid and present Maya felt, but then I saw it.
It was like a golden cord running from her to me, and I was giving her a jump, for lack of a better term.
She was drawing on my new powers to charge herself up.
I didn’t mind loaning her the energy required, because if I delved into my own mind, it scared me how strong and vast it was.
Galaxies upon galaxies awaited me, silent and each more glorious than all imagining.