Listen To The Silence by Sheryl

Chapter 8

"Help me, please..."
Faint, brushing against dreams.
"Please, can you hear me?"
Intrusion, the fog of sleep lifts slowly, as always, grimacing and groaning away the blanket of comfort as the mind gives up it's peace, the body surrenders lax muscles to the tension of waking. Almost audible moan of tightening joints, clenching jaw, trials of awakening comparable to injury as aches and itches return with a vengeance.
"Please, don't leave me out here..."
Eyes blink open, blurry, focus worked for, senses attuning gradually to surroundings, the pebbled white of ceiling paint, mechanical hum of recirculated air, featureless rug shampoo scent of community air, mind registering environment even while wondering who had called.
Legs stretch against hotel sheets, soft, surprisingly annoyingly damp.
Night sweats. Again.
Sleepy head shake of disgust, as hands move into soaking hair, sighing. The taste of overwork lingers in a dry mouth, vague desire to drink overshadowed once again with puzzled confusion. What had awakened him?
"Please, hear me!"
Urgency now, who WAS that?!

The boy sits up, shoving unpleasant hair from his face, grimacing at the smell of his own sweat, senses withdrawing slightly as that part of his mind, so newly reawakened, sends out its call.
"Who are you? Where are you?"
He listens intently, shivering  in the artificial chill, eyes rolled up a little in his concentration, seeking... seeking... finding nothing. No answer, no mental flex as his signal clears his shields.
"I hear you, where are you?"
Mindvoice strikes and edge, bounces back, the ache of backlash beginning as efforts intensify.
So frustrating, why is his voice not reaching its target?
His own urgency awakened at remembered distress in the mental voice, he pushes harder, reaching, the impression of walls suddenly flooding his mind, snapping his eyes open.
Walls? What was that? He knows his mind, he has no walls.

Heart beginning to race a little, breath speeding up as fear sinks icy claws into the pit of his stomach, he pushes again, this time rewarded with a diamond slice of pain, sinking deep into his brain. His gasp almost inaudible, he pushes again, unaware of the added sweat breaking on his brow, the color draining from a sleepflushed face.
Pushes, pushes hard, psychic strength gathered, arrowed, lasered into the heart of the thing, whatever it is, blocking him. Feels it hit, sink in, penetrate.
Absolute stillness, suddenly all systems on hold, as the laser of his mind cuts through and through and through. Senses strained to overload, all is still, waiting... pale, somehow hideously shadowed face smiling slightly.
It had gone, he'd felt it, that sudden slipping, a knife through melon rind, that tense resistance and sudden give. It had gone...

His relief cuts off suddenly, as his signal is thrown back at him, striking hard, stealing breath from lungs as the pain hits, a pain too deep to identify, bypassing the surface nerves he thought he knew, sinking with a sickening thrill into the very core of him, pain that calls up images of delicate white brain, sliced and gouged, filling with blood, dying, cells screaming in agony.
Dreamy, almost fainting terror, as pressure from his head builds and he feels hot liquid run down his lip, hot salt slipping in, for a moment caught perfectly in tension, pressure from his swelling, aching, pulsing brain pushing down, down, down on his eyes, face throat. Horrible pressure pushing up, up from his stomach, turned inside out, up against chest, lungs, the same throat, constricted with the pain from his head, slick, bright blood hanging in the back. 
He realizes he's about to vomit, seconds before it happens, barely allowing  time to miss the bed, strike of bedtable against temple unfelt as the insurmountable pressure builds, builds, and the pain sinks gigantic razor claws into all of him. Wrapped in it, the world recedes, grays, mind shutting down, last coherent thought the sudden, unbearable need to open the window, to breathe what of life there is out there, in the acrid, pollution choked mud called rain, splattering against the windows.

********************

Thousands of miles away, the dark haired boy sagged into his friend's arms, spent. It had taken all he had to keep that American boy from reaching the other one, the new overseer, or so they thought. So strong, he had been so strong, he'd almost penetrated their blocks.
Wiping the sweat of backlash shock from his face, Dan looked up, shaking his head. "Almost too much, Kyle. Almost too much, he's so strong..."
"Did you kill him?"
The other boy, Kyle, bearing a striking resemblance to his brother Kellan, eyes his friend warily. He's dealt an almost final strike, he can see it.
"No..." Dan's head shake is listless. "No, I just pushed him back in. He's backlashed worse than I am, though."
"What about Cara?"
"What about her?"
"You know you can't block her out, all she needs to do is take him by the hand and lead him right around it."
Dan's head shakes faintly, knowing that at this point, it can't matter.
"Kyle he's toast. He's sick as a dog and out cold. Cara won't even know she's needed until it's too late. Now you..." He swallowed against the nausea shadowing his throat, trying to ignore it. "You... take care of that Jesse person."
"Now?"
He knows the other boy senses his fear, knows how contemptuous he will be, but he can't help his fear. He is afraid, his own mortality upon him. He's already seen it, the death to come, so many people, and he wishes he could discount himself from those numbers.
"Now." Dannon's voice, sick and weak though it is, wends its way into his mind, and he slumps, already in the alpha state he works in, already on the attack.

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