He had a dream that he saw a unicorn. White, with a flowing mane and tail,
and polished hooves that made no sound on the waving grass. A sparkling
white horn was upon his forehead, and his head was held high, gazing off
into the pine trees. He was searching for something. Sometimes he'd seem
to find it, but he'd come away disappointed… eventually the beast
disappeared into the mists of restless sleep.
He woke shivering. There was an awful chill to the air, and Johnny wrapped his arms around his thin form, attempting to preserve some of his heat. Plenty of light streamed in through the barred door and window… wait… the what?
Nny struggled to his feet, his arms still locked tightly around his body. He didn't remember this, not any of it. But it was so cold… everything else he could remember was a confused jumble of images, feelings, and sounds. He remembered seeing things that he couldn't possibly have seen. He remembered things happening that could not happen. He remembered them happening over and over again… he remembered Squee. Poor little Squee, they'd been taking him away, but they flew at Nny on vaguely insectoid wings and tried to kill him when he'd run after them. He remembered they had no heads. He remembered a lot of things… he remembered Squee turning into some… Nny pushed the thought from his mind. Sometimes these things happened to him. Sometimes he remembered things that he shouldn't, and all of it was so confused he just dismissed it. Things like that happened, when your mind was hurting and sick…
Nny sat back on the hard wooden bench attached to the wall at the back of the stone cell. For a cell it was, with icy drafts pushing roughly inside every few seconds, battling with the snatches of warm air that remained for supremacy. Perhaps cynically, Johnny enjoyed the cold. It numbed him, gave him some semblance of un-humanness. But where was he? The daylight streaming in through those windows began to hurt his eyes after a while. He wanted to get out of here, and he stood, starting to pace back and forth, his figure hunched and his tread silent, like some mindless, caged animal…
The hollow staccato of Jason Cross's boots rang emptily in the stone halls. In his opinion, they needed something… anything… to deaden the sounds. The idea, of course, was to prevent anyone sneaking in, though it was not the best and certainly not the only security measure. Despite this, they'd already found four intruders this month and security was on edge. The directing board was ready to pounce on anything or anyone that looked suspicious. Jason Cross kept his eyes straight ahead and his gait purposeful; his military-style hair, neat clean jeans, and uniform jacket would refute suspicion.
He'd written a report on the last intruder and received a summons about it. He was not unduly nervous; it had not been a routine intruder and he'd been as brief as he could. Somehow it was embarrassing, that one knife-wielding psycho had managed to get as far inside as he did. Most people expected an intruder to be as devious and careful as possible.
One of the doctors was there, waiting for him. They called them 'doctors' although they were more or less metaphysical specialists and did the major work in occult and magick. They didn't dress like doctors. Long gray and black robes were their garb, and some of them wore charms or jewelry.
"Jason Cross." A low voice made Jason jump, and he turned quickly as he stepped inside, searching for the source of the voice. The doctor stepped out of the shadows. Dressed in a dark grey robe that flowed down his frail body to brush the stone floor, the man was old and balding, with a thin smirk and a strange, cold glint in his eyes.
"Sir?"
"This… intruder," the doctor said. The man did not bother to divulge his name; security personnel weren't so privileged as to be worth that formality. The doctor held up a carbon copy of the report Jason had written. "Do you think he may be a special kind of soul? Perhaps one with a malady or old scars…"
"I don't know, sir," Jason said, as respectfully as possible. He kept his eyes trained on the doctor's face, resisting the urge to glance fearfully around the dark room. Everything about this soul stuff unnerved him… but his job paid exceptionally well, had excellent health and personal benefits, and he was more of the type to just do as he was told and not question what his superiors were up to. Alls he knew was that they were raising the dead. Or trying to. Everything was so top-secret, no one knew if they'd actually succeeded yet. They weren't trying to animate the dead… oh no. They were trying to recall the souls of the dead.
"It would be interesting… to see the antics of a diseased soul, don't you think, Jason?" Jason did not respond.
After several long minutes of pacing, Johnny sat down again. With returning sanity, and the biting cold, came increasing clarity of thought, and Nny was slowly realizing the dire situation he was trapped in. No matter that he had no clue where he was or why he was here. The fact that he was in a cell divined that someone had put him here. The fact that his needs had not been provided for told him that whoever had put him here did not intend him to live long.
Slowly Nny's fingers went to the top of his long boots. He touched the handle of the knife that he always kept hidden there. As if on cue, he heard the heavy thudding of booted feet echoing through the stone hallway. His thin fingers, numbed with cold, tightened around the knife, and Johnny slipped down to the floor, crouching by the door as the footsteps approached.
But they went right by. Johnny did not relax, but remained there, the cold numbing his limbs. A sharp ache spread through his legs after a while from the uncomfortable position, but Nny dared not break it. It seemed hours before he heard the sound of footsteps again. This time, they slowed and stopped by his cell. A wary looking man, dressed in a uniform black jacket and a pair of jeans, entered after the muzzle of his pistol. Johnny tried to lunge forward, but the stiffness of his limbs betrayed him and he fell, the knife clattering across the stone floor of the cell. In another moment he was laying there, the cold barrel of the man's gun pressed into his temple. Johnny barely felt it.
Jason gazed down at the knife for a moment, as it lay hidden in a shadow against the wall. It was small, compared to the half-sword this man had been brandishing when he came in. Jason ignored the cold sweat that had beaded on his forehead. Thank God they kept these cells so drafty… from the look of it, the man had been too numb with the cold to make a successful attack. For a fleeting moment, Jason almost felt sorry for this one. He looked absolutely wretched. He was painfully thin, with sickly- yellow skin, a shock of tangled, medium-length black hair, and crazed, watery eyes. The clothes he was wearing were not enough to protect him from the cold, and his flesh was pale with the chill.
"Stand up," Jason said. The man did so. His eyes were shifty, taking everything in around him, as he walked before Jason into the hall. Jason noted with amazement that the man's tread was silent as a panther, even inside this empty stone hallway. At times, Jason felt sorry for prisoners, even intruders. At one time in his life he'd been a respectable and God-fearing man, but that was behind him now. And he could not now bring himself to feel sorry for this man. He was afraid of him; he was too silent, too deadly, too crazed… when several hours before he'd been an incoherent, screaming blur of a figure, his knife glinting with the blood of three slain guards.
"What is your name?" Jason asked the man. One current theory among the doctors was that knowing something's name gave you power over it to some extent. It couldn't hurt to hold that over this one's head…
"Johnny C," the man replied. His voice was as cold and distant as his demeanor, but there was a glint in his eye, a glint like a warm fire in the middle of an iced, moonless night. And it was not a nice fire. It was the wrong color, it did strange things… it was what you wanted to hide in the shadows from, and hope that when it passed from view it wasn't gazing your way…
Somehow, Jason did not feel any more powerful for owning this man's name.
Johnny wished he'd had a knife in his other boot. There was little chance of him downing an armed man without a weapon. He was fast, but he was not strong, and he needed a blade to add the convincing argument to his attack. Johnny wondered briefly if this man was carrying a knife, but he knew he probably wouldn't live long enough to find out should he decided to pursue the matter. Not with that gun barrel jammed in between his shoulder blades. Johnny hated it. He wanted to turn and tear it from the man's grip, break it into six pieces and shove them all, one by one, down the man's throat. It was a tempting thought, but Nny was not under the delusion that he could pull it off. He wanted to live for the moment. And he had a bad feeling about this place… it felt cold and ugly, even without the persuasion of the constant drafty winds, and Johnny didn't think this would be a good place to die in.
Dr. Anthony Kasavin leaned back into the chair, a sigh falling from his lips. The chair was hard and uncomfortable, but Anthony had long since stopped noticing it. Along with the feeling of power that came with what he did, came a surety of character and motive. He knew he was, he knew what he could do, and he knew he was doing right. People would pay money… a lot of money, to have dead loved ones back. With a low chuckle, Anthony thanked science and the fanatic Christians once again for the way they had molded the ignorant populace. Science had taught them that the metaphysical and the magickal were legend and fantasy. Christianity had taught them that they had one life, one chance, and one ending. Only one. That, of course, was not true… Anthony knew from experience and from many discussions with otherworldly beings that the soul did not live one life, and that the dead were not really dead. They had only moved on.
But America did not have to know this. They could continue to believe that death was death, that it was the end of the only life they would ever live, and that if their loved ones died they would never see them again. And not only America, but also the world… once this research paid off. Once these tedious, wearing experiments paid off, once the doctors learned everything they needed to know about reviving a soul; then their work with the public could begin.
Dr. Kasavin heard the footsteps in the hallway. Only one pair; the doctor frowned. He knew there were two people approaching, but not being able to hear one of them was disturbing. One thin hand gestured ever so slightly, and the air wrinkled around it. A pair of glowing eyes, visible only to the psychic mind, peered eagerly towards the door. This was one of the spirits Dr. Kasavin used as a familiar, to focus the energy he needed. Of course it obeyed him, he was too powerful for it to have a choice.
The door opened, and Jason Cross pushed a man into the room at gunpoint. He was an extremely thin and ill-looking fellow, with large, suspicious eyes that could not stay still on one object for very long. Extending just a touch of power, Dr. Kasavin felt the painful writhing of the man's soul inside of his body. There was something dark concentrated here. Dr. Kasavin knew plenty about negative energy and how it worked, and he could swear this man inadvertently sucked it in. No wonder he was insane. This would definitely be… an educational experience.
"Did he give you a name, Jason?" The doctor asked the security official.
"Johnny C."
"Thank you, Jason. Leave us."
The security head quickly left, and Dr. Kasavin turned to his new charge. "Now, my boy," he said softly, placing the tips of his fingers together. The elemental at his side began to eagerly circle the man, reaching out to poke at him with strands of negative energy that, to its surprise, got pulled down into the center of Johnny's being. Dr. Kasavin made a sharp jab of thought at the creature, which retreated. Johnny was noticeably shivering with the sudden influx of negativity.
"My dear boy," Dr. Kasavin said dryly. "I don't know if you know it, but you are a black hole for negativity. You must have an awful time of it, hmm?"
Johnny said nothing; he only gazed coldly at the man. From the second he had walked in the door he hadn't liked this guy. It almost seemed like he could be the center of the ugly feeling that radiated all throughout this place. And why had they built it looking like a medieval castle? Something to do with this idiotic Harry Potter wannabe? And whatever that thing was that had been here a moment ago. He hadn't seen anything, but he'd felt something like an oppressive cloud, drawing closer and closer. It had been building up inside him, and he could barely keep his mind on the situation at hand.
Yes, Nny well knew that he was a 'black hole' for negativity, in a manner of speaking. He drew bad energy. There was so much of it nowadays, with all the idiocy and ugliness of humankind that it had to go somewhere to maintain the natural balance of energy on Earth. That somewhere was people like Johnny. He wasn't sure he really understood it; but that did not belie the fact that it was there.
He needed to get out of here. Now. It hit him with a certainty he'd not felt in years, and he shuddered with fear.
Dr. Kasavin stood up and walked over to Johnny. He could feel the boy's fear hammering at his mind. Yes, despite the fact that this intruder was a full-grown man, the doctor was already considering him a boy. That was true of most of his 'patients'. In fact, it was true of most humans on Earth. They were children, all of them. They were ignorant, blind things that lived out their simplistic lives, begging to be taken advantage of. There was no need for violence, or for comfort, or for emotion. There was only the need to keep the body alive to contain the mind. It was the mind that was important, that held the power. It was the mind that could accomplish anything.
"Don't be afraid." Dr. Kasavin's voiced pitched lower, softer. "You're going to help me learn, so that I can better help people. Don't you have a family?" The doctor said this last with a wry smirk to himself. He severely doubted this insane young man had anyone but himself in his life.
The boy was backing up, his thin form shaking badly now. Dr. Kasavin's eyes narrowed a bit; why was the figure so shadowy? As if there were a fog, or something, clouding not only his vision, but his psychic sense as well. This wasn't right, and Dr. Kasavin didn't like it. He had long ago learned to be wary of anything he did not fully understand and know all sides to. He heard the elemental at his side making strange noises, something like growls, now like screams. And then he felt its energy dissipate. And still, he could not fully see Johnny before him. This was not the boy's doing. He had searched this human full over with his own psychic senses, and he did not have this kind of power. No, this was a power beyond a mere human's.
There was nothing he saw, but Dr. Kasavin felt a swirl of power, and when everything was sharp and clear again as he liked it, the elemental was gone, and so was the boy.
Johnny felt himself pressed tightly to something that moved and flowed underneath him. His hands grasped handfuls of some silky, threadlike material, and warmth spread throughout his cold body. When he opened his eyes, all of that was gone, and he was standing on a spiral staircase inside of a tower, leaning against the cold, stony wall. How had he gotten here? He realized that the man in the room he'd been in was gone, and relief gripped his tense muscles so suddenly that he collapsed. He heard the angry blaring of an alarm in the distance, and he thought of his knife. He knew he couldn't fight somebody like that with a knife, but those ordinary people in the jackets, they would do fine by a knife. Johnny struggled to his feet, and finding a doorway in the side of the tower, opened it cautiously.
He was in luck; it was indeed the hallway his cell had been on, and there was no one there. Some of the cells were open, some closed, and Nny stepped out into the hall. He would feel a little safer, at least, with a knife at hand.
In the hall was the unicorn. The what…? Well, it was horse-like in shape and size, white all over, with a long spiral horn on its forehead and a red-golden streak from its eyes to its nostrils. It looked like the one he'd seen in his dream earlier… but everything had been hazy then, anyway, perhaps it still was. Why had he had to fall asleep? Was it shock? He couldn't even remember how he'd gotten into this place, and he sure should've…
But when he looked at the unicorn, he felt suddenly warmer, and he thought he heard it speaking to him... "Johnny C. They won't catch you again, yet. Get your blade, if you have need of it. Hurry."
Johnny did. Pine wouldn't hurt him.
He woke shivering. There was an awful chill to the air, and Johnny wrapped his arms around his thin form, attempting to preserve some of his heat. Plenty of light streamed in through the barred door and window… wait… the what?
Nny struggled to his feet, his arms still locked tightly around his body. He didn't remember this, not any of it. But it was so cold… everything else he could remember was a confused jumble of images, feelings, and sounds. He remembered seeing things that he couldn't possibly have seen. He remembered things happening that could not happen. He remembered them happening over and over again… he remembered Squee. Poor little Squee, they'd been taking him away, but they flew at Nny on vaguely insectoid wings and tried to kill him when he'd run after them. He remembered they had no heads. He remembered a lot of things… he remembered Squee turning into some… Nny pushed the thought from his mind. Sometimes these things happened to him. Sometimes he remembered things that he shouldn't, and all of it was so confused he just dismissed it. Things like that happened, when your mind was hurting and sick…
Nny sat back on the hard wooden bench attached to the wall at the back of the stone cell. For a cell it was, with icy drafts pushing roughly inside every few seconds, battling with the snatches of warm air that remained for supremacy. Perhaps cynically, Johnny enjoyed the cold. It numbed him, gave him some semblance of un-humanness. But where was he? The daylight streaming in through those windows began to hurt his eyes after a while. He wanted to get out of here, and he stood, starting to pace back and forth, his figure hunched and his tread silent, like some mindless, caged animal…
The hollow staccato of Jason Cross's boots rang emptily in the stone halls. In his opinion, they needed something… anything… to deaden the sounds. The idea, of course, was to prevent anyone sneaking in, though it was not the best and certainly not the only security measure. Despite this, they'd already found four intruders this month and security was on edge. The directing board was ready to pounce on anything or anyone that looked suspicious. Jason Cross kept his eyes straight ahead and his gait purposeful; his military-style hair, neat clean jeans, and uniform jacket would refute suspicion.
He'd written a report on the last intruder and received a summons about it. He was not unduly nervous; it had not been a routine intruder and he'd been as brief as he could. Somehow it was embarrassing, that one knife-wielding psycho had managed to get as far inside as he did. Most people expected an intruder to be as devious and careful as possible.
One of the doctors was there, waiting for him. They called them 'doctors' although they were more or less metaphysical specialists and did the major work in occult and magick. They didn't dress like doctors. Long gray and black robes were their garb, and some of them wore charms or jewelry.
"Jason Cross." A low voice made Jason jump, and he turned quickly as he stepped inside, searching for the source of the voice. The doctor stepped out of the shadows. Dressed in a dark grey robe that flowed down his frail body to brush the stone floor, the man was old and balding, with a thin smirk and a strange, cold glint in his eyes.
"Sir?"
"This… intruder," the doctor said. The man did not bother to divulge his name; security personnel weren't so privileged as to be worth that formality. The doctor held up a carbon copy of the report Jason had written. "Do you think he may be a special kind of soul? Perhaps one with a malady or old scars…"
"I don't know, sir," Jason said, as respectfully as possible. He kept his eyes trained on the doctor's face, resisting the urge to glance fearfully around the dark room. Everything about this soul stuff unnerved him… but his job paid exceptionally well, had excellent health and personal benefits, and he was more of the type to just do as he was told and not question what his superiors were up to. Alls he knew was that they were raising the dead. Or trying to. Everything was so top-secret, no one knew if they'd actually succeeded yet. They weren't trying to animate the dead… oh no. They were trying to recall the souls of the dead.
"It would be interesting… to see the antics of a diseased soul, don't you think, Jason?" Jason did not respond.
After several long minutes of pacing, Johnny sat down again. With returning sanity, and the biting cold, came increasing clarity of thought, and Nny was slowly realizing the dire situation he was trapped in. No matter that he had no clue where he was or why he was here. The fact that he was in a cell divined that someone had put him here. The fact that his needs had not been provided for told him that whoever had put him here did not intend him to live long.
Slowly Nny's fingers went to the top of his long boots. He touched the handle of the knife that he always kept hidden there. As if on cue, he heard the heavy thudding of booted feet echoing through the stone hallway. His thin fingers, numbed with cold, tightened around the knife, and Johnny slipped down to the floor, crouching by the door as the footsteps approached.
But they went right by. Johnny did not relax, but remained there, the cold numbing his limbs. A sharp ache spread through his legs after a while from the uncomfortable position, but Nny dared not break it. It seemed hours before he heard the sound of footsteps again. This time, they slowed and stopped by his cell. A wary looking man, dressed in a uniform black jacket and a pair of jeans, entered after the muzzle of his pistol. Johnny tried to lunge forward, but the stiffness of his limbs betrayed him and he fell, the knife clattering across the stone floor of the cell. In another moment he was laying there, the cold barrel of the man's gun pressed into his temple. Johnny barely felt it.
Jason gazed down at the knife for a moment, as it lay hidden in a shadow against the wall. It was small, compared to the half-sword this man had been brandishing when he came in. Jason ignored the cold sweat that had beaded on his forehead. Thank God they kept these cells so drafty… from the look of it, the man had been too numb with the cold to make a successful attack. For a fleeting moment, Jason almost felt sorry for this one. He looked absolutely wretched. He was painfully thin, with sickly- yellow skin, a shock of tangled, medium-length black hair, and crazed, watery eyes. The clothes he was wearing were not enough to protect him from the cold, and his flesh was pale with the chill.
"Stand up," Jason said. The man did so. His eyes were shifty, taking everything in around him, as he walked before Jason into the hall. Jason noted with amazement that the man's tread was silent as a panther, even inside this empty stone hallway. At times, Jason felt sorry for prisoners, even intruders. At one time in his life he'd been a respectable and God-fearing man, but that was behind him now. And he could not now bring himself to feel sorry for this man. He was afraid of him; he was too silent, too deadly, too crazed… when several hours before he'd been an incoherent, screaming blur of a figure, his knife glinting with the blood of three slain guards.
"What is your name?" Jason asked the man. One current theory among the doctors was that knowing something's name gave you power over it to some extent. It couldn't hurt to hold that over this one's head…
"Johnny C," the man replied. His voice was as cold and distant as his demeanor, but there was a glint in his eye, a glint like a warm fire in the middle of an iced, moonless night. And it was not a nice fire. It was the wrong color, it did strange things… it was what you wanted to hide in the shadows from, and hope that when it passed from view it wasn't gazing your way…
Somehow, Jason did not feel any more powerful for owning this man's name.
Johnny wished he'd had a knife in his other boot. There was little chance of him downing an armed man without a weapon. He was fast, but he was not strong, and he needed a blade to add the convincing argument to his attack. Johnny wondered briefly if this man was carrying a knife, but he knew he probably wouldn't live long enough to find out should he decided to pursue the matter. Not with that gun barrel jammed in between his shoulder blades. Johnny hated it. He wanted to turn and tear it from the man's grip, break it into six pieces and shove them all, one by one, down the man's throat. It was a tempting thought, but Nny was not under the delusion that he could pull it off. He wanted to live for the moment. And he had a bad feeling about this place… it felt cold and ugly, even without the persuasion of the constant drafty winds, and Johnny didn't think this would be a good place to die in.
Dr. Anthony Kasavin leaned back into the chair, a sigh falling from his lips. The chair was hard and uncomfortable, but Anthony had long since stopped noticing it. Along with the feeling of power that came with what he did, came a surety of character and motive. He knew he was, he knew what he could do, and he knew he was doing right. People would pay money… a lot of money, to have dead loved ones back. With a low chuckle, Anthony thanked science and the fanatic Christians once again for the way they had molded the ignorant populace. Science had taught them that the metaphysical and the magickal were legend and fantasy. Christianity had taught them that they had one life, one chance, and one ending. Only one. That, of course, was not true… Anthony knew from experience and from many discussions with otherworldly beings that the soul did not live one life, and that the dead were not really dead. They had only moved on.
But America did not have to know this. They could continue to believe that death was death, that it was the end of the only life they would ever live, and that if their loved ones died they would never see them again. And not only America, but also the world… once this research paid off. Once these tedious, wearing experiments paid off, once the doctors learned everything they needed to know about reviving a soul; then their work with the public could begin.
Dr. Kasavin heard the footsteps in the hallway. Only one pair; the doctor frowned. He knew there were two people approaching, but not being able to hear one of them was disturbing. One thin hand gestured ever so slightly, and the air wrinkled around it. A pair of glowing eyes, visible only to the psychic mind, peered eagerly towards the door. This was one of the spirits Dr. Kasavin used as a familiar, to focus the energy he needed. Of course it obeyed him, he was too powerful for it to have a choice.
The door opened, and Jason Cross pushed a man into the room at gunpoint. He was an extremely thin and ill-looking fellow, with large, suspicious eyes that could not stay still on one object for very long. Extending just a touch of power, Dr. Kasavin felt the painful writhing of the man's soul inside of his body. There was something dark concentrated here. Dr. Kasavin knew plenty about negative energy and how it worked, and he could swear this man inadvertently sucked it in. No wonder he was insane. This would definitely be… an educational experience.
"Did he give you a name, Jason?" The doctor asked the security official.
"Johnny C."
"Thank you, Jason. Leave us."
The security head quickly left, and Dr. Kasavin turned to his new charge. "Now, my boy," he said softly, placing the tips of his fingers together. The elemental at his side began to eagerly circle the man, reaching out to poke at him with strands of negative energy that, to its surprise, got pulled down into the center of Johnny's being. Dr. Kasavin made a sharp jab of thought at the creature, which retreated. Johnny was noticeably shivering with the sudden influx of negativity.
"My dear boy," Dr. Kasavin said dryly. "I don't know if you know it, but you are a black hole for negativity. You must have an awful time of it, hmm?"
Johnny said nothing; he only gazed coldly at the man. From the second he had walked in the door he hadn't liked this guy. It almost seemed like he could be the center of the ugly feeling that radiated all throughout this place. And why had they built it looking like a medieval castle? Something to do with this idiotic Harry Potter wannabe? And whatever that thing was that had been here a moment ago. He hadn't seen anything, but he'd felt something like an oppressive cloud, drawing closer and closer. It had been building up inside him, and he could barely keep his mind on the situation at hand.
Yes, Nny well knew that he was a 'black hole' for negativity, in a manner of speaking. He drew bad energy. There was so much of it nowadays, with all the idiocy and ugliness of humankind that it had to go somewhere to maintain the natural balance of energy on Earth. That somewhere was people like Johnny. He wasn't sure he really understood it; but that did not belie the fact that it was there.
He needed to get out of here. Now. It hit him with a certainty he'd not felt in years, and he shuddered with fear.
Dr. Kasavin stood up and walked over to Johnny. He could feel the boy's fear hammering at his mind. Yes, despite the fact that this intruder was a full-grown man, the doctor was already considering him a boy. That was true of most of his 'patients'. In fact, it was true of most humans on Earth. They were children, all of them. They were ignorant, blind things that lived out their simplistic lives, begging to be taken advantage of. There was no need for violence, or for comfort, or for emotion. There was only the need to keep the body alive to contain the mind. It was the mind that was important, that held the power. It was the mind that could accomplish anything.
"Don't be afraid." Dr. Kasavin's voiced pitched lower, softer. "You're going to help me learn, so that I can better help people. Don't you have a family?" The doctor said this last with a wry smirk to himself. He severely doubted this insane young man had anyone but himself in his life.
The boy was backing up, his thin form shaking badly now. Dr. Kasavin's eyes narrowed a bit; why was the figure so shadowy? As if there were a fog, or something, clouding not only his vision, but his psychic sense as well. This wasn't right, and Dr. Kasavin didn't like it. He had long ago learned to be wary of anything he did not fully understand and know all sides to. He heard the elemental at his side making strange noises, something like growls, now like screams. And then he felt its energy dissipate. And still, he could not fully see Johnny before him. This was not the boy's doing. He had searched this human full over with his own psychic senses, and he did not have this kind of power. No, this was a power beyond a mere human's.
There was nothing he saw, but Dr. Kasavin felt a swirl of power, and when everything was sharp and clear again as he liked it, the elemental was gone, and so was the boy.
Johnny felt himself pressed tightly to something that moved and flowed underneath him. His hands grasped handfuls of some silky, threadlike material, and warmth spread throughout his cold body. When he opened his eyes, all of that was gone, and he was standing on a spiral staircase inside of a tower, leaning against the cold, stony wall. How had he gotten here? He realized that the man in the room he'd been in was gone, and relief gripped his tense muscles so suddenly that he collapsed. He heard the angry blaring of an alarm in the distance, and he thought of his knife. He knew he couldn't fight somebody like that with a knife, but those ordinary people in the jackets, they would do fine by a knife. Johnny struggled to his feet, and finding a doorway in the side of the tower, opened it cautiously.
He was in luck; it was indeed the hallway his cell had been on, and there was no one there. Some of the cells were open, some closed, and Nny stepped out into the hall. He would feel a little safer, at least, with a knife at hand.
In the hall was the unicorn. The what…? Well, it was horse-like in shape and size, white all over, with a long spiral horn on its forehead and a red-golden streak from its eyes to its nostrils. It looked like the one he'd seen in his dream earlier… but everything had been hazy then, anyway, perhaps it still was. Why had he had to fall asleep? Was it shock? He couldn't even remember how he'd gotten into this place, and he sure should've…
But when he looked at the unicorn, he felt suddenly warmer, and he thought he heard it speaking to him... "Johnny C. They won't catch you again, yet. Get your blade, if you have need of it. Hurry."
Johnny did. Pine wouldn't hurt him.
