The Descendants - From There to Here
Chapter 1

When the building called Freeland House was still a bed and breakfast, the room had been the second floor sun porch. A brass plate next to the double doors that connected it to the hall still called it such. Time had not been kind to it. In the five years after it had been sold, dust and mold had colonized, rendering the original padding on the two futons unsanitary. The wicker furniture was still serviceable, but frayed and worn all the same. A thick coat of grime on the bay windows may it almost impossible to see out of them.

What it had been held no meaning to anyone present, for this night the room was an infirmary.

On one futon lay a man in his mid twenties, his hair matted in blood, his clothes soaked in the same. His wounds had been closed, but he had yet to regain consciousness from the beating he had taken earlier in the day.

Across from him on the other futon, lay a young Arabic man, probably sixteen or seventeen. He was also unconscious, but with no signs of violence on his body. Whatever had been done to him before had all but shut his motor functions down.

Between the two, a tall, black woman in her twenties sat hugging a weeping redheaded teenaged girl tightly, cooing calming words to her while trying her hardest to keep from crying herself. The damage done had not all been physical.

Alexis Keyes watched everything from the doorway, trying desperately to piece everything together, asking herself how they had come to be here and if things had to turn out this way. The more troubling thing on her mind, however, was that everything was happening not for something they had done – but for something they were.

The government called them Psionics, though that name hardly described the variety and range of the powers that such people displayed. What Alexis had been taught about those like herself was that they were the descendants of test subjects in hundreds of different experiments conducted in the 1940’s and 50’s.

It had taken five generations for the first obvious effects of the experiments to be noticed and by then there were hundreds, possibly thousands of people across the globe displaying supernatural powers and genetic deformities.

Alexis had attended a school for such people; the Psionics Training and Application Academy, along with Laurel Brant; the ebon skinned woman, and Ian Smythe, the wounded man on the couch. They had become best friends there. In fact, Alexis looked back on her time at the Academy as some of the happiest years of her life.

She had been so happy there that she had taken a job teaching there to help the next generation as had been done for her.

An involuntary shudder ran through her body. That was where the trouble had started.

Three days ago, she had gone down to the archives to provide enrollment data from the earliest years of the school to a local journalist doing a piece on the Academy. While there, she had stumbled across a misplaced file from the Data Retrieval Department. Inside was a memo concerning the students that applied for the Academy. Twenty percent of those who registered to enter the school were admitted. The rest, however were captured and placed in stasis for ‘data retrieval’.

Alexis allowed herself to slide down the doorframe into a sitting position, her knees pulled up to her chest. Her straight, black hair fell in a curtain over her eyes. She had believed in the Academy, in its promise to train gifted people like herself and help them use their abilities to make the world a better place. Now she just felt like a fool, taken in by honeyed words and grand promises.

She had been a student there – a teacher there. But what was she really? Bate, she realized, to lure in the next eighty percent of applicants for ‘data retrieval’. Eighty percent. The Academy admitted dozens of students a year. If they were the remaining twenty percent, then hundreds, perhaps thousands had been put into stasis.

Fear had driven her to seek out her two friends in Washington State, where they had both sought employment as researchers for Brant Industries, Laurel’s billionaire father’s company after over a year of being incommunicado. Inadvertently, she had also led an enforcer in the employ of the Academy called Prometheus directly to Ian’s home.

As Alexis struggled to explain what she had discovered, Prometheus had attacked, burning Ian’s home to the ground in the process. Fleeing, the trio had hatched a plan to rescue the captured students being held in stasis in the Academy’s research center.

Images of stasis cells flickered across Alexis’s memory. It made her dizzy with nausea. She knew stasis only as a medical term. Terminal patients were put into stasis as an emergency last measure. The process was traumatic and few were ever kept in stasis more than a few days for fear of permanent physical damage to motor function. The Academy, however had apparently been putting people in stasis for its entire sixteen year history.

Alexis glanced up at the red head in Laurel’s arms. Her name was Melissa Forrester and she was living proof that the Academy had been putting people in stasis for at least eleven years. She had been Alexis’s roommate in freshman year. Now, over a decade later, Melissa was still physically and mentally sixteen. Recognizing Alexis, Laurel and Ian had been a shock to her system however and she hadn’t stopped crying since they had taken her out of stasis.

Even worse off than Melissa, however was Kareem Utt, the teen lying on the futon opposite Ian. The documentation on his stasis cell had said that he had been in stasis for four years, but the detrimental physical effects that time had had on him were grave. He was, effectively, in a coma, but in his case, this had not left him unable to sense his surroundings or communicate. Even while in his coma, his telepathic powers and ability to project himself onto the astral plane remained active, allowing him to speak mentally to others.

At the moment however, Kareem remained silent.

Alexis, Laurel and Ian had rescued two other teens from stasis; Warrick Kaine and Cynthia McAllister; though neither of those two seemed to have suffered any harm mentally or physically and were even now watching television down the hall from the makeshift infirmary.

That rescue had take place earlier that day. Ian had once again come face to face with Prometheus as he tried to stall the enforcer, giving Alexis time to take the kids to safety. In the process, he had taken a brutal beating before Alexis could return to fly him to safety.

After that, Laurel had taken over from the physically and emotionally drained Alexis. She had calmed Melissa down long enough to get her to use her healing touch on Ian. Then she had driven everyone to this place – Freeland House. It belonged to her father, William Brant via a number of shell corporations and he had in turn directed her to it when he had learned of the plight of the group.

In truth, Alexis expected nothing less from Laurel. Though she was hyper-cognitive, capable of retaining any and all information she read or learned, and therefore one of the most intelligent people on the planet, she was also one of the most empathetic people on the planet. Like her father, Laurel’s primary concern in life was that everyone around her was happy.

As if sensing Alexis was thinking about her, Laurel looked up from the now sleeping form of Melissa. “Are you doing any better now, Alex?” she asked like a concerned mother.

Alexis shook her head. “It’s just a lot to take in, Laurel.” She said dumbly. “I mean a few days ago, I was so happy to be working for the Academy and now…” She choked back a sob.

Gently laying Melissa to the side, Laurel stood and walked over to kneel beside her friend. “There’s no way you could have known, Alex.” She said sympathetically. “And look at it this way; now that we know about this, we can do something about it.”

“How?” Alexis asked, holding back another sob. “Are we going to lobby Congress? The Academy is government funded, Laurel. Even with your father’s connections, I’m not sure people that send pyrokinetic enforcers to hunt down people who know too much are going to care much about politics.”

“There’s other ways of doing things, you know?” Laurel said, moving to sit against the wall, beside Alexis. “These four kids were all there were at the Academy campus; that means they’re holding others elsewhere. We can find them and save more kids from stasis at least. I’d wager that at least one of those places has some concrete evidence we can use too.”

Blinking, Alexis looked over at Laurel. “You mean fight them again? But you saw what happened to Ian…”

“Ian will be fine. Remember, he’s the one that came up with the idea to try and rescue people from stasis in the first place.” Laurel spared a glance toward where Ian lay. “You know he’ll be all for doing it again no matter how many hits he takes. It’s just his way.”

“Even if we are willing,” Alexis said, seriously considering the notion now, “Can we seriously deal with the likes of enforcers like Prometheus? He nearly killed Ian.”

“With the help of a Brant Industries powered armor suit.” Laurel pointed out. “A version a lot older than the ones Ian and I were working on when you came to us. I’m not one to brag, but between you and Ian’s powers and some new technology, we could even the playing field.”

Melissa made a sound in her sleep and drew both women’s attention.

Alexis’s contemplation of Laurel’s plan stopped dead. “We can’t though. The kids… we can’t just send them back home for the Academy to recapture at their leisure. We need to look out for them and fix this place up so they can live here comfortably. There’s no way we could do that if we’re running around the country breaking into research facilities.”

“I can stay here to hold down the fort.” Laurel said. “You know, make sure you two have a home to come back to, watch the kids, that sort of thing.”

“But fighting was your idea. Why would you bow out to play den mother?”

“Because I wouldn’t be very useful fighting.” Laurel shrugged. “Ian can control the density of liquid and gas – even back in school, he was able to do real damage with that. You can turn light into heat. Until today, I never saw you use it offensively, but you can fuse steel with those little bolts of darkness you throw.” She shifted to a more comfortable position against the wall. “Me? I’m smart. And that’s about it as far as powers go. What am I going to do in a fight, engage the enemy in a discussion about string theory?”

Alexis nodded. If Laurel said she wouldn’t be much use in a fight, she wouldn’t be. Still, the concept of using her powers offensively was a foreign concept to her. Back at the Academy, she only used her abilities to generate what her instructors called ‘black heat’, which she directed to allowing herself to fly, or rendering herself invisible. Even then, using her power to bend light around her rendered her blind and never seemed like much of a good idea. Of course, at the Academy, using one’s powers to do harm or property damage was a serious offense and it was discouraged to even contemplate.

The Academy’s stated purpose was to groom gifted youths to use their powers in civil service capacities. It was generally assumed that those who entered the armed services received special training in the offensive uses of their powers.

More subversive elements circulated rumors of non-government affiliated individuals that acted as vigilantes; using their powers to fight for their own causes, usually breaking up criminal enterprises. These days, a few of these were widely known. The ones most popular in the public eye had become known collectively as Prelates.

After a few moments of silent thought, Alexis put her head back against the doorframe. “I’m not exactly ready to be a Prelate, Laurel. For one thing, it’d draw a lot of unneeded attention; something these kids don’t need.”

Laurel nodded, accepting her decision even if she didn’t agree.

“But I’ll tell you what; once Ian’s back on his feet and this place is fixed up, then we’ll see what we can do about all of this, okay?” Alexis managed to give her friend a small smile.

A long groan came from Ian. Both women looked up to see him starting to stir. Slowly, he swung his feet off the futon, and sat up. Coughing, he ran a hand through his blood encrusted hair.

“Oh, man… what happened?” He managed, looking at his now bloodied hand. He was still very unsteady and confusion from both blood loss and Melissa’s healing touch were taking their toll. “And why am I so dizzy?” He wondered aloud as his friends rose and came to his side.

“Melissa healed you.” Laurel said, reaching him slightly ahead of Alexis. “But all she really does is speed up your body’s natural healing process and your metabolism, resulting in an abnormally low blood sugar...” She paused, noting Ian’s confused expression. “Her healing makes you hungry.” She said plainly with a bit of a dissatisfied smirk.

Ian looked around. “Where are the other two?” He asked, referring to the kids.

“Down the hall, watching television.” Laurel pointed vaguely.

“Uh-huh. And where exactly are we?” Ian asked, shaking his head to clear it as Alexis sat down beside him.

“Mayfield, Virginia.” Alexis said. “Laurel bought us here. This place is her dad’s.”

“We’re safe here if that’s what you’re worried about.” Laurel said gently. “I’ve set up enough fake credit card uses to lead them to Atlanta.”

Ian nodded, swaying slightly. He cast another glance in Melissa’s direction. “Hey, Alexis… is that girl really…”

Alexis nodded. “Melissa Forrester, my old roommate from the Academy.”

“How?” Ian asked, starting to stand, but the fatigue caused his knees to buckle. “She’s just a kid. Melissa would be our age now.”

“I’ll go get you something to eat.” Laurel started toward the door. “This isn’t going to be any easier to explain with you malnourished.”

“It’s just how stasis works. She doesn’t remember a thing after coming back to the school after spring break.” Alexis gave the sleeping girl a sympathetic look. “She’s going to need a lot of time to adjust to all this. I don’t even know where to begin.”

Changing the subject, Ian gestured toward Kareem. “Has he woken up at all yet?”

Alexis shrugged. “In his way. He’s a telepath, so he can talk to us mentally when he wants to. But Laurel doesn’t know how much damage the stasis has done to his body. He may not wake up.” She trembled at the thought.

“Hey,” Ian looked over at Alexis. “That doesn’t sound like you. Back in school, you were pretty much the leader of our little group. Laurel’s the smart one, but you always found a way to get things done. You, me, and Laurel? Hell, I don’t think there’s anything the three of us can’t do.”

She couldn’t help but give him a smile. “That was years ago though. I’m not used to telling people what to do anymore. In truth, I always thought I was kind of a bitch to you and Laurel in school.”

Ian nodded, most of his vertigo receding. “That’s why you didn’t some to Washington with us, isn’t it? And why you stayed away from us months at a time?”

This time Alexis couldn’t stop a few tears from trickling down her face. She could only give a small nod. Her first few years teaching at the Academy had been an eye opener for her; seeing teens acting in much the same way she had with her friends and not really liking what she saw.

Ian put a hand on her shoulder, trying not to tip over in the process. “Look, we never did things we didn’t want to do and you never pushed us. You just happened to be really good at coming up with ideas.” He looked around the tumbledown room and made a resolute face. “How about we start small; how are we going to get this place fixed up without telling the world we’re here?”

To Be Continued...