Xona scoffed. “I agree with the General. What use is art when you’re in a firefight?”
“It’s important,” Adrien said. “It reminds us what we’re fighting for—the ability to think and feel and create.”
Xona just stared at him. “We’re fighting to stay alive. Plain and simple.”
I looked down at the cup of goop on the table in front of me. I took another couple of slurps from the straw, then pulled back with a grimace. “Ugh, it’s even worse when it’s cooled off.”
“I can help.” I looked up to see Rand standing over me, Juan by his side.
Before I could respond, Rand put his hand on the outside of my cup and the protein concoction bubbled. But then the whole cup started to melt and become misshapen.
“Crackin’ hell, Rand” Adrien jumped and pushed the cup away from me with a napkin. “Be careful. You’re gonna burn her.”
Rand removed his finger. “Oops,” he said. He flashed a grin at Ginni and me and sat down. “Hard to turn it down sometimes. Can’t contain the Rand, after all.”
Ginni smiled and tossed a napkin at his face.
“So wait, your power,” I asked, watching with fascination as the bubbling finally stopped, “it doesn’t work only with metal?”
Rand leaned in and smiled conspiratorially. “I can heat up just about anything.”
Ginni giggled. Xona rolled her eyes.
“Let’s not forget the incident where you melted the central truss in the west tunnel and trapped us for three hours until they dug us out,” Adrien said.
“Aw, man, why you gotta bring that up?”
“That’s why we have glitcher training every afternoon,” Ginni said. “To help us learn to control our powers. And speaking of,” she nodded to the clock on the wall. “We gotta go.” She ate a few more quick bites and then stood up with her tray. I’d gotten enough of the protein mix down before Rand melted the cup that I was full, too.
“Who teaches it?” I asked, standing up.
“Now that Jilia’s here, she and my mom take turns teaching,” Adrien said. “But I think it’s Jilia today.”
Ginni clapped her hands together. “Oh good, I’ve missed training with Jilia! She used to train us when we were at the camps before the Foundation was finished.”
“Aww,” Rand said mournfully, “I thought I was done with that meditation junk for good.”
We headed down the hallway past the Med Center to a small room. Cushions were set up in a circle on the ground. I looked around in confusion.
“Where are the desks and chairs?” I whispered to Adrien.
He laughed. “That’s not Jilia’s style. We sit on the ground. You’ll see.”
Adrien settled on a pillow and gestured for me to do the same. Molla came in a few minutes later and sat beside City. Ginni, who sat on the other side of me, leaned in and whispered, “Molla’s not on any task force because of the baby. But Jilia said it’d be good for her to still come and meditate with us when she can.”
I stared at Ginni. She seemed to know everything about everyone. It made me wonder what she told others about me.
Finally, Jilia came in. After everyone had settled in, she began.
“My job is to help train you in the study of your own minds, so you can control your powers when it counts.” Jilia walked around the circle. “Studying the mind is the key to controlling anger, joy, all your emotions. The same parts of the brain are linked to glitcher Gifts, so controlling and understanding your emotions will help you do the same with your Gifts.”
My back straightened at her words. This was what I was here for. Maybe I’d finally be able to get my powers under control.
“We’ll begin with twenty minutes of silent meditation when I ring the bell,” she said. She held up a small bronze bell. “Try to empty your mind and let all your worries and hopes and fears drift away. A wise man called Dogen once said that to study meditation is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. And to forget the self is to be connected to all things.”
“Aw, Doc,” Rand complained, his long muscled legs folded awkwardly on the cushion. “Can’t we skip to the fun stuff? Like melting that bell and making it into something useful?”
“I’ve missed you too, Rand,” Jilia said with a smile. “Your complaints, as always, are noted. I’ll sound the bell now. Juan, will you begin playing as well?”
I looked up in surprise to see that Juan was sitting on a chair in the corner of the room holding a strange contraption that rested on the ground with a long stringed neck. One of Juan’s hands hovered over the strings, and the other held a long slim stick with a ribbon strung along its length.
“Juan’s cello music will help us all relax and connect to our emotions. Empty your mind and try to be at one with the present.”
Doc positioned herself back on her own cushion and rang the bell. Almost simultaneously Juan put the ribboned stick to the strings, and the most aching sound moaned out.
My eyes widened. Music. I’d heard of it but had never actually heard it. When I was still a drone in the Community, they used to play long tones over the Link during Scheduled Subject Downtime, but it was nothing like this. After a few moments of listening, entranced, the beauty of the sound made my chest expand outward.
The buzzing in my mind seemed to vibrate in response to the rising notes of the instrument. It was both scary and exhilarating to feel the power build so quickly. I knew Juan could affect moods with his music—maybe this was finally the key to gaining control.
My power responded. I felt the shape of the entire room and everyone in it inside my mind. Nine heartbeats, no, ten. A small fluttering one. The baby. I could feel Molla’s baby. My breath caught.
Then instead of one long weeping note after another, Juan put the ribbon to two strings at once in harmony. The music swept me up beyond the room where we were all sitting. I was disoriented by how quickly it expanded.
Suddenly I could feel everything, not just the shape of the room or the hallway outside. I zoomed outward like a lens readjusting. I could see the entire compound. The two main hallways of the Foundation ran like little tubes, with rooms between and branching out to the sides. I could feel the level below ours too, and the main elevator that led up to the air-transport deck. One second I could sense the complex components that made up the engine of the transport and smell the oiled metal, then the next moment I’d zoomed out again even farther this time.
It was going too fast. I was starting to feel dizzy. Quick as the moment it took for another breath in, I could feel the shape of the whole mountain above us, the canyon stretching out beside it, and the mountain range beyond.
And then I was hurtled into the sky.
Panic spiked through me. I wasn’t in control. Not at all. I was being dragged outward helplessly into the endless sky. No shape, no contour. It just went on and on forever. The sky had always terrified me, and now I spun recklessly through it with no tether holding me to the earth. I couldn’t sense my own body anymore at all. I was going to get lost.
It was exhilarating and terrifying.
I had to pull it back, had to get control. The instrument hit a high, vibrating note that thrummed straight through me. I tried to hold on to the sound to pull myself back. I quivered with the note and tried to trace it back to the source, back to the center of the rippling vibration.
Suddenly the quiet music was ruptured and I was drawn back into my body so quickly it felt like I’d been ripped in two—part of myself still floating somewhere above in the sky, the other half sitting in a room under the mountain. I blinked hard. I was back in the room, and it was all of me, my mind as well as my body. But the same moment, the cello vibrated and burst into pieces in Juan’s hands. Everybody screamed and tried to shield themselves.