Part 12
Emma sat perched on the edge of the over-stuffed chintz-covered sofa, an empty tea-cup clutched forgotten in her hand as she tried to work out just exactly what was going on around her.
What was throwing her off most, she thought, was the imbalance of what she was picking up, the apparent inconsistency in the normal 360-degree Sensaround emotional buzz that she was so used to defending herself from. Because, while on the one hand she had Adam, as hesitant and unsure of himself as she'd ever seen him, on the other was the enigma that was Joshua.
The boy sitting in the wheelchair was probably the same age as Connie - maybe 14 or 15 - but that was where the similarity ended. He was reed thin, the plaid shirt and cotton pants he wore doing nothing to disguise the lack of flesh covering the bones of his legs and arms, or the narrow hunched shoulders that made his chest seem even more sunken than it actually was. His hands, their long bony fingers twitching restlessly, were just visible under the too long sleeves, but although the overall impression should have been one of frailty, Emma couldn't help but feel there was an oddly incongruous wiry underlying strength about him.
The sharp-featured face was pale, the pasty pallid-ness of one who rarely sees the sun, his mouse-brown hair as fine as a baby's and almost as sparse, wisping unevenly over his forehead and ears and clinging to the lines of his skull.
It was his eyes that had held Emma almost spellbound, though - huge, darkly luminous pools that seemed to absorb everything around them without giving anything back. Eyes that watched Adam as he spoke, as he apologised for losing touch for so long, for not being there for him when he awoke from the coma, and gave no sign at all as to how their owner was feeling. But she could get nothing from him either, not even the vaguest sense of what was going through his mind, and that was what had her so disconcerted. It was like a black hole on her telempathic radar, and that was unusual enough to keep her going back to probe it like an unscratchable itch.
Not that he was paying her any attention. After a courteous, though somewhat distant acknowledgement of Adam's introduction, and a single piercing look that had felt uncannily as if it had told him all there was to know about her, Joshua had turned his gaze on the older man. And, apart from a few brief moments, it had barely wavered since.
That this detached scrutiny had made Adam uncomfortable was obvious. Emma wasn't used to seeing him at a loss for words but, with nothing to tell him how his overtures were being received, he was finding it harder and harder to keep the one-sided conversation going.
Initially, though, it hadn't been a problem. The voluble middle-aged woman, who'd introduced herself as Mrs. Hartson when she'd opened the door to them, had brought them into this pleasant if rather homely front room where Joshua was waiting, offering and serving up a tray of tea and homemade cake in no time flat with cheerful disregard for their polite protestations that it wasn't necessary.
Presumably there was a Mr. Hartson somewhere, although there'd been no evidence of him so far. But the woman had been totally open and well meaning, as far as Emma could tell, even though her almost compulsive chatter had grated a little. Her excitement at having visitors was a clear indication that this was a rare occurrence, and once she'd found out Adam was someone from Joshua's past she hadn't been able to decide between asking questions about what had gone before and giving them a blow by blow account of his life since he'd arrived to stay with them. So she'd ended up trying to do both and in the process had left little space for anyone else to speak, not even to answer her queries.
Finally, though, Joshua had suggested quietly that she had other things to do, and she acceded with such alacrity that Emma would have suspected some psionic reinforcement even if she hadn't felt the shiver of something trickling across the outside of her own mental shields.
The awkward silence that had followed Mrs. Hartson's departure had been broken by Adam's first guarded attempts at broaching the subject of the real reason for their visit - though Emma was strangely sure that Joshua already knew. But the timing of Jesse's call, coming as it did just as it looked like he might be getting somewhere, had proved both an unwelcome distraction and a useful opening. She was a little perturbed at the way Adam had cut him off, especially given the depth of concern in the molecular's voice, but that just served as another indication of how this reunion was affecting their normally cool and collected leader.
"Was that Jesse?" Joshua asked softly, almost his first words since the woman had left them. "How is he?"
Adam shrugged, lips curving into an encouraging smile at this sign that the ice seemed to have been broken. "He's been better. He had an accident a few days ago which has him kind of rattled."
"He fell in a river, right?" the boy said, smiling distantly at the speculative look Adam threw him. "I saw it - but you already knew that, didn't you? That's why you're here."
Adam leant forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees as he gazed earnestly at him.
"You saw... what, exactly?"
The dark eyes observed him for long seconds, as if weighing up his question - or something more, the reasons behind it maybe.
"I saw him... die," came the eventual answer but, though they waited for more, it seemed Joshua wasn't about to give them anything easily.
"But he didn't," Adam pointed out eventually.
"No." Another long pause, then, "Did he... did he know it was going to happen?" The question was posed carefully, but there was a hint of hopefulness in his tone.
"Well, he'd had dreams - nightmares, about something that was very close to what then transpired. Apart from the outcome, of course." It was Adam's turn to pause before asking equally carefully, "Was that you?"
Joshua sighed with what Emma might have expected to feel as relief or satisfaction had there been anything there to support it. "Maybe. I tried, but I didn't know."
"What did you try?"
"To help him, of course. To warn him."
"And the others? Were you trying to help them too?" Adam prompted
The eyes blinked at him cautiously. "The others? They heard me?" But he barely waited for the older man's nod before continuing with the beginnings of an agitation that was totally unexpected given what had gone before. "But... how can I do that? Why is this happening to me? What *am* I?"
For a terrifying moment the black hole turned inside out and released a tidal surge of jumbled and desperately intense emotions that all but overwhelmed Emma's defences. She gasped involuntarily at the onslaught, but it was gone again before she could get a clear grasp of what had driven it, disappearing back into the void once more. "Sorry," she murmured at the twin startled looks she received, hoping they'd just carry on and leave her to sift through what she'd felt, give her time allow the flash of insight she'd had into what was going on to crystallise. And indeed, after a searching glance, Adam turned back to Joshua again with a reassuring smile.
"Don't worry - we're going to help you work that out. Tell me, do you remember anything about why you were with us, before the... the accident? And what made you think you might be able to warn Jesse, those people?"
Joshua looked away, fingers plucking distractedly at the blanket hanging over the arm of his chair.
"I know there's something different about me, something no one here knows about or understands. And somehow it shows me things I don't want to see, things about people I knew once but haven't seen in a long time - not in person, anyway. But if I think hard about them I can kind of feel them." His soft voice had been rising in pitch and intensity as he spoke, and Emma felt the first stirrings of what promised to be a total collapse of whatever the boy was using to contain himself so completely. "They tried to help me, I had to do the same for them. I thought if I did, if I could, they might stop but they won't, they're getting worse, hurting more and I just want it all to go away!"
She leant forward, reaching a soothing hand towards him. "Joshua? Calm down, it's all right. We'll help you."
"No, you... I can't." He lifted pleading eyes to Adam again, as he whispered, "Please... don't leave me here."
Adam stared at him in alarmed confusion. "What...?"
But, with a sudden wordless cry, Joshua stiffened convulsively then flopped sideways, eyes rolling up into his head.
"Adam!" Emma yelped in shock as she got the backlash of another telepathic tsunami, indicating that his crude shields had collapsed just before his mind shut down. She leapt up to stop him sliding from his wheelchair, searching for signs of life in the new void she could now sense and relieved to find him still in there, albeit striving for invisibility.
"I don't know - it looks like some kind of seizure." Adam helped her lift his feather-weight onto the sofa and turn him onto his side, feeling the spasms still shaking his body. "You'd better call Mrs. Hartson."
But the woman was already there, twittering bird-like in her distress and fussing around the shuddering boy. "You're a doctor, aren't you? Do something!"
"Has he ever had this kind of episode before?" he asked, trying to focus her enough to be helpful.
"Yes. They said he used to have them quite often when he was still in the nursing home, but he's only had a couple since he's been here. They gave me oxygen to give him until we could get him to Emergency. But Arthur's away with the truck..." She trailed off, gaze fluttering around the room until his request that she fetch the oxygen gave her some direction.
She bustled away, coming back with a small cylinder that Emma took from her while Adam offered their assistance in getting Joshua to medical care, assistance she accepted gratefully as he'd known she would. She even volunteered to go and pack a few unnecessary necessities, which gave him time to explain to Emma, "I want to get him back to Sanctuary, check on how far his genetic make-up has been altered by what's happened. If I can pinpoint the exact state of his mutation, I should be able to stabilise his condition, then help him get control of his powers instead of being governed by them like this."
"Will he last the journey without something more than this?" she asked anxiously, gently holding the mask over the boy's slack mouth.
"Well, I don't think the local hospital is really going to be able to deal with this, and certainly not long term. Sanctuary is his best chance - we just have to get him there quickly."
"But what about Shalimar and Brennan? We can't just leave them down there."
"We'll try calling them from the Helix, tell them what's going on. But even if we can't reach them, there's enough time to drop us off at home and for you to still get down there before the pick-up. Now, let's move."
She nodded, not totally convinced, but knowing their options were limited. She also knew that having found him Adam wasn't about to abandon Joshua again, especially not after his heartfelt plea. So, gathering up the blanket and a pillow, she helped Adam bundle the unconscious boy carefully into his arms and followed them out to the plane.
****
Emma sat perched on the edge of the over-stuffed chintz-covered sofa, an empty tea-cup clutched forgotten in her hand as she tried to work out just exactly what was going on around her.
What was throwing her off most, she thought, was the imbalance of what she was picking up, the apparent inconsistency in the normal 360-degree Sensaround emotional buzz that she was so used to defending herself from. Because, while on the one hand she had Adam, as hesitant and unsure of himself as she'd ever seen him, on the other was the enigma that was Joshua.
The boy sitting in the wheelchair was probably the same age as Connie - maybe 14 or 15 - but that was where the similarity ended. He was reed thin, the plaid shirt and cotton pants he wore doing nothing to disguise the lack of flesh covering the bones of his legs and arms, or the narrow hunched shoulders that made his chest seem even more sunken than it actually was. His hands, their long bony fingers twitching restlessly, were just visible under the too long sleeves, but although the overall impression should have been one of frailty, Emma couldn't help but feel there was an oddly incongruous wiry underlying strength about him.
The sharp-featured face was pale, the pasty pallid-ness of one who rarely sees the sun, his mouse-brown hair as fine as a baby's and almost as sparse, wisping unevenly over his forehead and ears and clinging to the lines of his skull.
It was his eyes that had held Emma almost spellbound, though - huge, darkly luminous pools that seemed to absorb everything around them without giving anything back. Eyes that watched Adam as he spoke, as he apologised for losing touch for so long, for not being there for him when he awoke from the coma, and gave no sign at all as to how their owner was feeling. But she could get nothing from him either, not even the vaguest sense of what was going through his mind, and that was what had her so disconcerted. It was like a black hole on her telempathic radar, and that was unusual enough to keep her going back to probe it like an unscratchable itch.
Not that he was paying her any attention. After a courteous, though somewhat distant acknowledgement of Adam's introduction, and a single piercing look that had felt uncannily as if it had told him all there was to know about her, Joshua had turned his gaze on the older man. And, apart from a few brief moments, it had barely wavered since.
That this detached scrutiny had made Adam uncomfortable was obvious. Emma wasn't used to seeing him at a loss for words but, with nothing to tell him how his overtures were being received, he was finding it harder and harder to keep the one-sided conversation going.
Initially, though, it hadn't been a problem. The voluble middle-aged woman, who'd introduced herself as Mrs. Hartson when she'd opened the door to them, had brought them into this pleasant if rather homely front room where Joshua was waiting, offering and serving up a tray of tea and homemade cake in no time flat with cheerful disregard for their polite protestations that it wasn't necessary.
Presumably there was a Mr. Hartson somewhere, although there'd been no evidence of him so far. But the woman had been totally open and well meaning, as far as Emma could tell, even though her almost compulsive chatter had grated a little. Her excitement at having visitors was a clear indication that this was a rare occurrence, and once she'd found out Adam was someone from Joshua's past she hadn't been able to decide between asking questions about what had gone before and giving them a blow by blow account of his life since he'd arrived to stay with them. So she'd ended up trying to do both and in the process had left little space for anyone else to speak, not even to answer her queries.
Finally, though, Joshua had suggested quietly that she had other things to do, and she acceded with such alacrity that Emma would have suspected some psionic reinforcement even if she hadn't felt the shiver of something trickling across the outside of her own mental shields.
The awkward silence that had followed Mrs. Hartson's departure had been broken by Adam's first guarded attempts at broaching the subject of the real reason for their visit - though Emma was strangely sure that Joshua already knew. But the timing of Jesse's call, coming as it did just as it looked like he might be getting somewhere, had proved both an unwelcome distraction and a useful opening. She was a little perturbed at the way Adam had cut him off, especially given the depth of concern in the molecular's voice, but that just served as another indication of how this reunion was affecting their normally cool and collected leader.
"Was that Jesse?" Joshua asked softly, almost his first words since the woman had left them. "How is he?"
Adam shrugged, lips curving into an encouraging smile at this sign that the ice seemed to have been broken. "He's been better. He had an accident a few days ago which has him kind of rattled."
"He fell in a river, right?" the boy said, smiling distantly at the speculative look Adam threw him. "I saw it - but you already knew that, didn't you? That's why you're here."
Adam leant forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees as he gazed earnestly at him.
"You saw... what, exactly?"
The dark eyes observed him for long seconds, as if weighing up his question - or something more, the reasons behind it maybe.
"I saw him... die," came the eventual answer but, though they waited for more, it seemed Joshua wasn't about to give them anything easily.
"But he didn't," Adam pointed out eventually.
"No." Another long pause, then, "Did he... did he know it was going to happen?" The question was posed carefully, but there was a hint of hopefulness in his tone.
"Well, he'd had dreams - nightmares, about something that was very close to what then transpired. Apart from the outcome, of course." It was Adam's turn to pause before asking equally carefully, "Was that you?"
Joshua sighed with what Emma might have expected to feel as relief or satisfaction had there been anything there to support it. "Maybe. I tried, but I didn't know."
"What did you try?"
"To help him, of course. To warn him."
"And the others? Were you trying to help them too?" Adam prompted
The eyes blinked at him cautiously. "The others? They heard me?" But he barely waited for the older man's nod before continuing with the beginnings of an agitation that was totally unexpected given what had gone before. "But... how can I do that? Why is this happening to me? What *am* I?"
For a terrifying moment the black hole turned inside out and released a tidal surge of jumbled and desperately intense emotions that all but overwhelmed Emma's defences. She gasped involuntarily at the onslaught, but it was gone again before she could get a clear grasp of what had driven it, disappearing back into the void once more. "Sorry," she murmured at the twin startled looks she received, hoping they'd just carry on and leave her to sift through what she'd felt, give her time allow the flash of insight she'd had into what was going on to crystallise. And indeed, after a searching glance, Adam turned back to Joshua again with a reassuring smile.
"Don't worry - we're going to help you work that out. Tell me, do you remember anything about why you were with us, before the... the accident? And what made you think you might be able to warn Jesse, those people?"
Joshua looked away, fingers plucking distractedly at the blanket hanging over the arm of his chair.
"I know there's something different about me, something no one here knows about or understands. And somehow it shows me things I don't want to see, things about people I knew once but haven't seen in a long time - not in person, anyway. But if I think hard about them I can kind of feel them." His soft voice had been rising in pitch and intensity as he spoke, and Emma felt the first stirrings of what promised to be a total collapse of whatever the boy was using to contain himself so completely. "They tried to help me, I had to do the same for them. I thought if I did, if I could, they might stop but they won't, they're getting worse, hurting more and I just want it all to go away!"
She leant forward, reaching a soothing hand towards him. "Joshua? Calm down, it's all right. We'll help you."
"No, you... I can't." He lifted pleading eyes to Adam again, as he whispered, "Please... don't leave me here."
Adam stared at him in alarmed confusion. "What...?"
But, with a sudden wordless cry, Joshua stiffened convulsively then flopped sideways, eyes rolling up into his head.
"Adam!" Emma yelped in shock as she got the backlash of another telepathic tsunami, indicating that his crude shields had collapsed just before his mind shut down. She leapt up to stop him sliding from his wheelchair, searching for signs of life in the new void she could now sense and relieved to find him still in there, albeit striving for invisibility.
"I don't know - it looks like some kind of seizure." Adam helped her lift his feather-weight onto the sofa and turn him onto his side, feeling the spasms still shaking his body. "You'd better call Mrs. Hartson."
But the woman was already there, twittering bird-like in her distress and fussing around the shuddering boy. "You're a doctor, aren't you? Do something!"
"Has he ever had this kind of episode before?" he asked, trying to focus her enough to be helpful.
"Yes. They said he used to have them quite often when he was still in the nursing home, but he's only had a couple since he's been here. They gave me oxygen to give him until we could get him to Emergency. But Arthur's away with the truck..." She trailed off, gaze fluttering around the room until his request that she fetch the oxygen gave her some direction.
She bustled away, coming back with a small cylinder that Emma took from her while Adam offered their assistance in getting Joshua to medical care, assistance she accepted gratefully as he'd known she would. She even volunteered to go and pack a few unnecessary necessities, which gave him time to explain to Emma, "I want to get him back to Sanctuary, check on how far his genetic make-up has been altered by what's happened. If I can pinpoint the exact state of his mutation, I should be able to stabilise his condition, then help him get control of his powers instead of being governed by them like this."
"Will he last the journey without something more than this?" she asked anxiously, gently holding the mask over the boy's slack mouth.
"Well, I don't think the local hospital is really going to be able to deal with this, and certainly not long term. Sanctuary is his best chance - we just have to get him there quickly."
"But what about Shalimar and Brennan? We can't just leave them down there."
"We'll try calling them from the Helix, tell them what's going on. But even if we can't reach them, there's enough time to drop us off at home and for you to still get down there before the pick-up. Now, let's move."
She nodded, not totally convinced, but knowing their options were limited. She also knew that having found him Adam wasn't about to abandon Joshua again, especially not after his heartfelt plea. So, gathering up the blanket and a pillow, she helped Adam bundle the unconscious boy carefully into his arms and followed them out to the plane.
****