CHAPTER 42 - AND REPEAT

Doctors in hazmat suits come to collect the bitten agent, and we are all transported to a small shack on the Long Island coast. The trip to the shack is like being pulled apart and thrown against the wall of time and space only to look down and realize you’re whole and standing in a different spot than before. The trip from the shack to the island is more like my previous experience with scattered atoms, peaceful and blissful. I almost want to take another trip, just because I like the sensation. Of course, with weekends off we’ll get plenty of time to do that again.

“Your rooms are as you left them,” the headmaster tells us.

“And Marie?” I ask, thinking about the spare bed in my room.

“Is on the 11th floor,” he replies. Cause they can’t have two Langdale girls in the same room, who knows what plans they might make. But I can’t help being a little thankful, I like having a room to myself.

“I’m in my old room?” Brody asks, not entirely hiding his disbelief.

“Yes, of course. Everything is as you left it.” I suppose putting Brody in the basement (and probably at some other school) might not seem like the smartest move on their part, not when he has two Langdales on his side. This is working out better than I expected. Of course, that can still change.

“I’ll get Marie settled in, meet me in my room in half an hour?” I ask him. He nods and leaves for his room.

“I can manage on my own,” Marie tells me in that common little sister ‘I don’t need a babysitter’ voice.

“Just want to see where they put you. I’m in 951,” I inform her. Joseph joins us and I send him a smile as we walk up the stairs. Making him set foot in the school, being around all the students, with what Brody has told me about him this is not his favorite thing, and they’d only do that if they were scared Marie or I might try something. I wonder if Marie could take him in a fight. It would be entertaining at the very least. As we walk up the many stairs, first the big one on the teaching floors, then the small ones on the dorm floors, the headmaster gives Marie the welcome speech.

“You’ll be studying with the Minders, we’ll send a student up to show you around the school, show you where your classes are etc..”

“2nd floor,” I tell her. “Most likely 235 or higher.” We stop outside her new room. “Sure you made the right…” I stop dead when I notice her room number. 1126. They’re giving her Pam’s room.

“Are all the rooms like this?” Marie asks.

“Every room I have seen,” I tell her.

“Yes, every room is furnished the same, but people personalize them. I see you don’t have anything packed either? Just like your sister.”

“Well, in our defense neither of us really had much preparation time,” I remind him. “One moment you’re at work, minding your own business, the next you’re at a less enchanting version of Hogwarts.”

“One minute you’re breaking your sister out of a torture chamber,” Marie remarks. “The next you’re on the run and somehow end up in a dorm room.” Somehow. That’s nice Marie, you wanted this. I have no idea why, but you wanted to be here.

“I’ll get my things in the weekend.”

“And I suppose you can steal my clothes till you get your own,” I agree. “There’s a small shop down in the village, you can get a toothbrush and such there.”

“Great, then I just need my books and my class schedule, and I’ll be all set.” A small laugh escapes me. “What?”

“Schedule,” I say. “They don’t really do things like that here,” I explain. “You get assigned to a level and a teacher, and you stay there until you’ve learned what they teach, then you move on to the next class.”

“You mean I stay in one class until I’ve mastered it? No alternating between classes? You just stay where you are until you get it, or you stay there forever?”

“Each class is a requirement to be able to keep up with the next class,” the headmaster says.

“Don’t worry, you’ll fly right through,” I assure her. Marie never was that interested in school - I think it was the whole sitting still and listening part that got to her.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“You’ll, of course, have to attend the history lessons too,” the headmaster remarks with a glance at me.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’ll give you a cheat sheet: Just say the Langdale family is the root of all evil, and you’ll get an A every time.”

“Miss Langdale, I think that is quite enough,” he tells me off. I have to admit the man’s got more guts than most here seem to have, telling off a Langdale in front of another Langdale. Brave. I can admire that.

“Sure. You all set Marie?” I ask.

“All set,” she replies.

“Want to join Brody and me?”

“I think I’ll head to the shop you mentioned, see what else is around here.” We both walk away from the room leaving all the officials, Joseph and the headmaster standing there with no idea how to react. Their school is no longer a mystery to the Langdales, and maybe it’s starting to dawn on them that that isn’t necessarily a good thing. I go down and find Brody waiting for me in my room.

“Still got the key,” he tells me and holds it up. I’d almost forgotten I gave him that. I smile and take a seat on the bed.

“Up for a game?” I ask.

“Sure.” I summon the set cards and mix them in the air.

“What happened to Sasha?” I ask. “You said she wasn’t an Unassigned, that she was something else.”

“Her powers aren’t natural,” he says.

“Well, thanks for clearing that up.”

“It’s like with me. My natural gift was my wings, everything else I can do aren’t natural gifts, they were something I taught myself.”

“Sasha can’t have done the same, she has no knowledge of how gifts work. It’d be like if I tried to transform into an animal, I have no idea how that gift works, I can’t just create it in myself.”

“True. I can control elements cause they are Nature, they resemble my natural gift.” And mind control he got out of necessity, to stop his father. “Sasha didn’t create her gift in herself.” He pauses, afraid to continue.

“Who did?”

“It was an accident.”

“I thought you said no one could hear us here? That powers can’t go through the doors of the dorms without being invited.”

“I know.”

“Then what? Are you afraid they changed the rules on us? That Langdales now get special rooms with no protection?”

“They can’t just take the protections down on a few rooms, it’d make the protection unstable, like a balloon with a hole in it. They can only add to it like Howard made them do with my room so my dad couldn’t physically enter it.” That’s good news, all of that. Brody is protected even when no one’s around, and no one can hear us. Except…

“If no one can overhear, it’s me you don’t want to tell,” I deduce. “What are you afraid I’ll do?”

“Nothing,” he says, but he’s still not comfortable telling me.

“It was an accident, you said. Do you mean that one of the children did that to her? That one of them could transform others instead of themselves?”

“No.” He takes a breath and makes a decision. “She did it to herself, she just didn’t know it. And it wasn’t Britt’s fault, I need you to understand that.”

“Of course.” But I don’t understand any of it.

“Britt fulfills wishes,” he blurts out as if the secret was hurting him.

“Like a genie?” I ask.

“No, like a…” He starts out but stops again, as if he actually heard what I said, and it wasn’t what he had expected. “Yes, actually, like a genie. She can’t decide what wishes she grants or who she helps, it just happens. She hears a wish, and she fulfills it.”

“And since she’s been locked up for so long her gift is manifesting in new ways. That’s why you had to keep her isolated, so no one could accidentally wish for anything. And because if you told people to not make wishes… It’d be like telling them not to blink, and it’s uncertain how stable she’d be after being kept in that cage for so long.”

“I think she didn’t need to hear the wish spoken out loud, her powers were so pent up.”

“Thinking it was enough. But with all the children there, it’d seem likely at least one of them would be wishing for their parents, a bed, a toy, something.”

“I kept her isolated, and it worked. Until I took down barrier around her when they left.”

“You think Sasha just happened to make a wish at the exact moment you let the shield down, and before Britt was transported?”

“I think she’d been wishing it all along, for years possibly; a constant wish in the back of her mind.”

“To have a gift, to make her mother proud,” I agree. “A wish so strong that Britt couldn’t help but fulfill it, even if it wasn’t spoken out loud.”

“It wasn’t her fault.”

“No,” I agree. “It wasn’t.” It was Mrs. InT’s fault. “What will happen to Sasha now?”

“With no natural abilities she doesn’t stand a chance of learning control, the gift will be foreign to her body. It might very well kill her in the end.” All because of bad timing and bad parenting. And me. I bare some of the blame too. He picks up three cards, shows them to me, and puts his set next to him.

“I gave your mother instructions on how to take care of the others, which ones to look out for and all of that.” I look up at him in surprise.

“Let me guess, you ran through a list in your head, repeating it again and again until you were sure she’d heard you?” He just looks down at the cards. “How many repetitions did you use?” He mumbles something I don’t catch. “Come again?”

“15,” he admits.

“Oh, I bet mother loved that.” I smile. “Set.” I pick up a single, full, purple circle, a double, half filled, green square, and a triple, empty, red wiggle.

My stomach grumbles; without the adrenaline, the hunger takes over. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything.

“Be right back,” Brody says and vanishes. That is not element control, that is like Transporting or something. What was it he said he had mastered? Nature with the elements, Minding with the mind control far less pleasant than Marie’s, and what? I am fairly certain he didn’t have Transporting, at least by what he’s told me. Could it be Transforming instead? I wonder if I’ll ever be allowed to know everything he can do.

10 minutes later someone knocks on my door. I open up hesitantly, not wanting the hassle of everyone finding out I’m back and the potential circus that could result in. It’s Brody outside with a cafeteria tray laden with food.