Bounders Page 14

  “Jasper?” Lucy whispers. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.” As I stare at a shimmering outline of Lucy, I’m sure it’s her only from her voice.

  “What is this?” she asks.

  “I have no idea.”

  She gropes in the darkness until she finds my hand. She clutches me like she’ll be lost in space if she lets go.

  “Okay, that’s a start,” Gedney says. “Don’t fret; you’ll adjust.”

  That’s it? Don’t fret?

  “Look, Einstein,” Marco calls out, “you’ve got to tell us what’s going on here.”

  Yeah, no kidding.

  “Very well, Marco. Can you make it to me? You’ll be first.”

  A glowing blob that must be Marco creeps toward Gedney. He waves his hands in front, trying to swat a path through the light.

  “Walk right through, son. Nothing’s going to hurt you,” Gedney says.

  Gedney pulls a second pair of gloves from somewhere and helps Marco ease them onto his hands.

  “Good, a perfect fit,” Gedney says.

  Lines of light race from Marco’s fingers.

  “Whoa!” Marco yells. “Oh man. I don’t know about this, Geds.” Marco’s voice vibrates with fear and exhilaration. His body jerks around like a giant bug has landed on him and he’s trying to shake it off.

  “Now, now, give it a second,” Gedney says. “The gloves are just binding with you. It’s a strange experience the first time.”

  Lucy leans over and whispers in my ear. “I can’t do this.”

  I’m thinking the same thing. I squeeze her hand, hoping she’ll think I’m trying to boost her confidence rather than hang on for dear life.

  Marco’s body finally quiets. He holds his hands in front of him and examines his palms. “What the heck happened?”

  “The gloves have established a direct cerebral link via your neural system,” Gedney says.

  “English, please, Geds,” Marco says.

  “The gloves are synced with your brain.”

  “Oh, of course,” Marco says, laughing nervously.

  “Try this,” Gedney says. He reaches forward and gathers all the light in front of him. He packs it together like a snowball. Where the light just was, there is blackness.

  “How?” Marco asks.

  “Just try,” Gedney says.

  Marco reaches out. He drags his hands through the air, but nothing happens.

  “Think about what you want to do, Marco. Focus on the outcome. Find the connection between the gloves and the brain.”

  Marco pulls his gloves through the light more slowly this time. At first nothing happens. Then a small pocket of blackness appears. He corralled some of the light with his left hand.

  Marco laughs again. “Oh wow. I can’t believe it. This is unreal.” His ball of brightness grows bigger, and the pocket of blackness surrounding him expands. “You guys gotta try this.”

  “And they will,” Gedney says. “Step over here, kids. I’ll get you set up with the gloves. We’ll run through a few exercises and then bound right in. Ha! I love that pun.”

  My sight is starting to adjust. I can tell who’s who, and I have a general sense of direction. Marco seems okay, and there’s no real way to avoid it anyhow.

  I push to a squat and lean toward Lucy. “We’ve got this. Let me help you up.” I pull her to her feet, and we make our way to Gedney.

  “Lucy, right, here you go,” Gedney says, handing her a pair of gloves. “And these are yours, Jasper.”

  The gloves are surprisingly thin. I expected to find wires or sensors to account for the light, but the material is gauzy. I push my hand into one glove and remember me and Addy playing with Mom’s stockings when we were little. The material stretches against my fingers and molds into place like a second skin.

  With both gloves on, I wait. At first I feel nothing. I ball my fingers into a fist then flex them out in a fan, waiting for them to ignite. I’m completely focused on my hands, so when my brain jolts, I jump.

  “What is that?” I shout. Another jolt, like Dad is turning the ignition key on the hovercraft we rented for our family vacation in the scorch zone. Something almost catches but doesn’t.

  Then the third time—jolt and jolt. A live wire races out of my brain, around the curve of my neck, through my shoulders, and down my arms, all the way to the gloves. When the current crosses the glove line, my hands glow even brighter, and the current runs right out my fingertips.

  “This is awesome!” I yell.

  I turn in a circle, arms outstretched, watching my hands stream through the glow-pricked blackness. I’ve never felt more alive.

  “Good, good. Gather around. No time to delay,” Gedney says.

  We line up in front of Gedney. Even Mira. She looks different. Taller, maybe, although I have no idea why.

  Cole waves a lighted hand in my face. “Isn’t this technology amazing?”

  “Yep, it’s super cool,” I say.

  “That’s an understatement,” Marco says.

  “Okay, listen,” Gedney starts. “This first game I’ll call Catch. Grab a partner and stand two meters apart. Gather the light together like I showed Marco and then toss it to your partner. Every time you make a pair of catches, take a step back.”

  Cole and I head to a corner, or at least what I think is a corner. The Ezone is still ridiculously disorienting.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” Cole asks.

  “I haven’t tried yet.” Gedney said to focus on the outcome. I close my eyes and visualize the connection between my hands and my brain. Yep, the current is definitely still there. I picture my body as a pinball machine, and my brain as the release bar. I envision what I want to do and—bam!—shoot the message into the current. It races down my arms and into my hands, which feel like magnets or machines or something totally unlike the mere appendages they were a few minutes ago.

  I focus on the light field in front of me and nudge a few of the glowing orbs. Sure enough, as long as I cling to the connection with my brain, they move at my will. I cluster together a couple hundred sparklers and wad them into a ball.

  “Ready?” I call to Cole. He has a similar sphere of light he’s kneading with his hands, but mine is definitely bigger.

  “Almost,” he replies.

  “Think fast!” I yell, and hurl my ball of light at him.

  “Hey!” Cole ducks as my light-ball whizzes by his head. “Not fair!” The ball sails beyond Cole and then breaks apart. The light scatters outward from the core in a hundred different directions.

  I crack up. “What did you think it was going to do to you? They’re just a bunch of silly lights, remember?”

  “Yeah?” Cole says. “Well, then, catch this!” He chucks his ball at me. And, okay, I’ll admit it’s a little unnerving to have a huge ball of light barreling at me, but I’m not about to lose face. I brace for impact and hold up my gloves, focusing on catching. When the ball is about a foot in front of me, I somehow stop it. The glowing mass hovers in the air between my gloves.

  “Nice catch,” Cole says. His voice sparks with excitement. My smile reaches from cheek to cheek. Hands down, playing with the gloves is the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

  Focusing on the ball, I bend my arms into my chest and push. “Catch!”

  By the time Gedney stops us, Cole and I are on opposite sides of the Ezone. Our ball is the size of a small boulder, but it weighs nothing. I toss it into the air and bop it to Cole, just like the giant beach balls the crowd keeps aloft at the futbol games Dad takes me to each spring.

  “This next exercise doesn’t require a partner,” Gedney says. “It’s basic practice for the assessments and rankings. Please gather around in a circle.”

  As I make my way to Gedney, I gather up a handful of light. I sneak up behind Lucy and dangle my fingers above her, letting the twinkles rain down onto her head.

  Lucy jumps and spins around. “Jasper! Cut it out! You scared me.”

&nb
sp; “That was the goal.”

  Lucy grabs at the light around her and hurls it at me.

  Just as I’m about to get Lucy back, I’m doused from behind by a downpour of light as big as the boulder Cole and I built.

  What on earth? I whirl around. The only one behind me is Mira. Mira did that? My face must gloss over in shock, because that’s definitely how I feel.

  Mira doesn’t say anything—she certainly doesn’t own up to it—but I could swear her mouth turns up on one side. A smile? A smirk? An involuntary lip twitch? I’m not sure.

  “Okay, kids,” Gedney says. “Focus here. Fun is fun, but we’ve no time to waste. Spread out. You need at least three meters on either side of you. Good. Now, close your eyes. Relax. Picture yourself as made of light. Connect with the light. Try to tap into your composition.”

  I close my eyes, but I have no idea what I’m doing. Picture myself as the light? What is this? Some weird spirituality? Can’t we go back to tossing light-balls?

  “Excuse me, Gedney,” Lucy says. “I don’t get it. What do you mean ‘connect with the light’? What does that have to do with the gloves?”

  “It has everything to do with the gloves,” Gedney says. “Sense your own light. Tap into the source.”

  Lucy looks at me. I shrug. That seems to happen a lot when Gedney’s talking. I close my eyes again and think about the light. The connection between the gloves and my brain is intense; it courses through me. Is that what he means by tapping into my source? I really don’t have a clue.

  Cole exhales sharply. “Can you at least give us the objective?”

  Waters walks into the circle. He must have been hanging back along the edge of the Ezone. “Gedney, if you don’t mind, maybe I can step in here.”

  Gedney moves aside, muttering. He’s too quiet to hear, but I bet it’s something like No time to waste or Don’t delay. I hold back a laugh. That guy cracks me up. He moves like a snail while he urges us to rush. Whatever. Somehow speed and learning how to tap our inner sources don’t really match up.

  Waters reaches into his pocket and withdraws a pair of gloves. He fits them onto his hands, pressing firmly on his fingers to align the fit. He lets his arms hang loosely by his sides, and jogs in place. Then his body jerks like he’s been struck—the neural connection—and he holds his hands out as the current blasts toward his palms.

  “I will never get tired of that,” Waters says with an enormous grin. “Anyhow, Gedney is the mastermind, but I’m perhaps a little less murky. Let me get to the meat of this. The light is a manifestation of matter, but not all matter. It’s a manifestation of the matter available to construct all of you. That’s why you needed to provide a bio signature to enter. The Ezone is preprogrammed to recognize your matter composition. When Gedney activated the program, all the matter that is you and can be used to construct a replica of you appeared in this room. Your building blocks, if you will.”

  “I don’t get it,” Lucy says. “We’re not made of light.”

  “No, you’re not,” Waters says. “But the bright light against the blackness makes an excellent training room. And if you remember Gedney’s demonstration in the pod room, when you use the gloves to manipulate matter in order to bound, the gloves enable the matter to glow.”

  “Building blocks?” Cole says. “That’s not possible. The building blocks of organic matter are far too small to see. There are lots of lights in here, I’ll give you that, but nowhere near equal to the number of atoms needed to rebuild us. If that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “You’re right on both counts, Cole. That is what I’m suggesting. And atoms are certainly too small to see with the naked eye. But, as it turns out, atoms are smart. And they’re even smarter in the presence of those gloves. The atoms in this room sense you. They’ve given you a head start by assembling in larger masses.”

  “Smarter in the presence of the gloves?” Cole asks. “I don’t understand. How is that possible? I’ve never read anything about that kind of technology.”

  “Well, Cole, some of this you’ll have to take on faith—partly because I don’t know the answers, and partly because the answers aren’t mine to impart.”

  Hmmm. What exactly does that mean? The answers aren’t his to impart? As in secrets? I never knew before I came to the EarthBound Academy, but Earth Force is full of secrets. The alien prisoner pops into my brain. I can’t see a connection, except for the secrecy, but I’ll have to give it some thought later. I have enough to focus on now.

  “So, your job is to gather together your building blocks. Assemble the atoms needed to replicate yourself.”

  “Great,” Marco says. “No problem. Except how the heck are we supposed to do that?”

  “It’s hard to explain, but you just know. Your brain knows on some innate level, and you can tap into that level through the gloves. I’m not good at it. Gedney’s the best. Well, I should say, Gedney’s the best for now. We suspect—in fact, we’ve bet our careers and, dare I say, the future of humankind—on the assumption every one of you will be better at this than anyone has ever been before you.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Your brains are better attuned to this. You have an advanced ability to open your minds and absorb limitless stimuli without triggering your filtering systems. And you have the ability to process all that information. Simply put, no one other than you Bounders is capable of that because we bred it out of our genes. Ha! I’m still pained to think about it. Genetic engineering was hailed as one of the biggest advancements of the twenty-first century. Humanity’s own technology is its greatest folly.”

  There is so much packed into Waters’s words, I can’t begin to digest it all. Filtering systems? Genetic engineering? I guess it boils down to a simple fact: Bounders can work the gloves. That’s why we were born.

  “Okay, so grab a spot,” Waters says. “Spread out. Focus. Think about what I said, and hopefully it will help you tap in. Try to gather the materials necessary to replicate yourself, the first step of bounding. You’ll have half an hour to prepare, and then we’ll test.”

  “Oh no, no, no. Wait a second . . . ,” Lucy says. “You’re going to rank us? Already? We’re not nearly prepared. We need more help, more guidance. I mean, how can you expect us to master this in half an hour?”

  “Your concerns are noted, Lucy. No one expects perfection. You’ll be given a score based on the percentage of correct material you gather. In four weeks we hope all of you will be at one hundred percent. We’ll start free-bounding Academy-wide in your second tour of duty this fall. And, as you may have heard, the top-ranked pod will be the first to free-bound on the last day of this tour.”

  I stare at the blackness behind my eyelids. Tap in to my source? Ummm, sure. Fear creeps up my throat and presses against my windpipe. I’m not afraid of the gloves or the light or even the idea of free-bounding. Not anymore. What I’m afraid of is much worse. I’m afraid I’ll fail. I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it. I’m afraid I’ll be as much of a disaster with the gloves as I am with the blast pack.

  I force a gulp of air down my constricted throat and focus. The current between my brain and the gloves sparks. I sense the power, but I’m not sure how to access it.

  Let go. The words appear in my brain. Mira? No way. I thought I’d heard her cry for help in the sensory gym, too. But how could that be possible? Still, for a split second I was sure she was there. There, as in, inside my brain.

  Well, it’s worth a shot. I relax my muscles, starting at the tip of my toes and moving upward. By the time I reach my neck, my body feels like jelly, and I’m not sure how much longer I can stand. My eyes roll inward until I see a faint orange-yellow glow that must be coming from inside my brain. Without warning, my brain grows—larger and larger—its energy pushing outward so I’m not sure it will be contained by the four walls of the Ezone.

  And then I’m there. I’m part of the light. Everything slows, and even the smallest spark sharpens with exquisite detail. Just li
ke Waters said, I know. I know what is a part of me, and what isn’t. There is a natural attraction between the lights that can bond together to form a replica of me. There is no other possible solution. It’s just right, in the purest way I’ve ever known.

  My heart whips around inside my chest, but I’m no longer afraid. I’m overwhelmed with a joy unlike anything I’ve ever felt. I am comforted, because I know with certainty everything in the universe is right and ordered and made of equal parts logic and intuition.

  I pull together my light. Reaching, grabbing, reigning it in. When I’ve harnessed all the light within reach, I flash my gloves to the corners of the Ezone, where the other lights float. I reach out with my mind and draw them to me.

  The brightness in the room grows more concentrated, and the patches of blackness expand. The other cadets are harnessing their light, too. Cole has a small sphere in front of him. He still gathers light within reach. Marco’s and Lucy’s spheres are bigger. Mira, though . . . at first I think I must be seeing things. Her sphere of light is enormous, at least twice as big as mine. She stands still, her hands by her sides, serenely gazing at her light.

  Waters claps his hands. “Good. Nice work. All of you. We’re off to an excellent start. Gedney, kill the program.”

  Without warning, the room darkens. As the light extinguishes, something is yanked from my chest. I sink to the ground and bury my head in my knees. Exhausted. Empty. Lonely.

  “We’ll start the testing now,” Waters says. “You’ll each be tested individually. You’ll have sixty seconds to gather your light. Your score will be based on the percentage you’ve gathered. The pod’s score will be posted to the Academy rankings. Bear in mind, your scores will be posted as a cumulative number: one pod, one score. No one outside our pod will know the internal score breakdown. And I expect to keep it that way. Understood?”

  We grunt our agreement, but we’re all so tired, we don’t have much more in us than that.

  “Remember,” Waters says, “the pod that places first in the rankings will free-bound in front of the entire Academy on the last day of this tour of duty.”