Hey everyone. I heard that there was gonna be some kind of power outage on the website for a couple days, so I decided to post this chapter before I wouldn't be able to, or at least I hope I'm on time!
chyp: Drunk from a movie, huh? Interesting, indeed.
Wesley woke up with a throbbing headache. As his eyes opened, his pupils immediately contracted from the brilliant light that shone around him. After slowly adjusting, he found himself in a large room, laying in a small bed, one of many beds where many other people also lay. Something struck him as he took in his surroundings; most of the others laying in their beds looked as stunned and confused as he was, and everyone wore the exact same collar around their necks. It was a simple gray band, made of what seemed to be chrome. Carved into every collar was the same thing, a strange symbol that looked vaguely familiar, but rang no bells. Wesley felt around his own neck and found that he too had been given one, but no matter how hard he pulled, the collar remained fastened around his neck.
He looked once more around the room. Everyone else just lay in their beds, dormant and unwilling to move. No one else bothered to mess with their collars. Maybe they tried before and came to the same conclusion. At any rate, Wesley thought, he needed to figure out the what, where, and why of the situation.
"A newbie, I see," a prematurely gray-haired man said from the bed immediately right of Wesley's. "Don't waste your energy. It's not coming off."
"What is this place?" Wesley asked. "And what am I doing here?"
"If you're here," the man said, "then it means you're a witch."
"Okay…" Wesley said with a drawn out tone.
"And if you're here," the man gestured around the room, "then it means you're a witch with one active power. They sort and separate us upon arrival."
"Do they run us through a sifter or something?" Wesley asked dryly. "And who are 'they'?"
"No one really knows," the man replied. "I've been here for seven years and all I've found out is that they're called 'The Order' and they're using witches to find something big."
"Sounds ominous," Wesley said. "By the way, I'm Wesley."
"Joe," the man introduced himself, extending his hand, "Joe Moon. Glad to meet you."
"Same," Wesley said, then scratched his head. "Wait. If everyone in here is a witch, then why hasn't anyone been able to break out of here?"
"It's the collars," Joe answered. "They activate whenever we use our powers. Sends some kind of jolt through your body. The more powerful you are, the more powerful the jolt. Not very pleasant."
Wesley spent the next half-hour talking to Joe and finding out everything he could about what was going on. In the middle of their conversation, though, the lights suddenly turned off and a gruff voice said "Get to sleep." Joe stopped talking at once, leaving Wesley to wonder who exactly these people of The Order were to be able to assert such power over an entire room of at least fifty witches. It intimidated him and he quietly followed Joe's lead, re-retiring to his bed, but he remained awake.
"Sir," a waiter said, getting James' attention, "I have a message for you from a Miss Samantha."
"Don't tell me," James said, sighing, "something's come up and she had to leave."
"I'm terribly sorry, sir," the waiter said, leaning in closer to James and whispering. "If you want to dump her, I'm here for you."
"Um, thanks," James said, scrunching his face up, "but no thanks. I'm just gonna go."
James left the restaurant in a mixed mood. He felt a simultaneous mix of rejection and anger, but his mind kept swinging back to their conversation about secrets, and he couldn't help but feel a bit of hypocrisy as well. Nevertheless, he had never been the one to break a date on account of "special circumstances."
He climbed into his truck and turned the key. Just then, his cell phone rang. He looked at the screen, wanting the name to read "Sam," but to his dismay, it was only Matthew. Not feeling like talking to anyone, he silenced the phone and slowly drove off, his destination unknown.
"Dammit," Matthew cursed silently as he threw Wesley's backpack across the room.
Matthew spent the last half-hour touching almost everything Wesley owned; shirts, keys, books, shoes, and some of his favorite foods had all been grabbed in hopes of triggering some insight to where Wesley had been taken. However determined he touched an item, though, Matthew ended up with the same disappointing results. What good was having a new power if it was uncontrollable?
On a related note, where the hell was James, he thought loudly. In addition to looking for clues that would lead to Wesley's whereabouts, he also had been trying to find his brother, if only to have a little help with the task at hand.
Undaunted, he shuffled through more things downstairs in the living room. More books, more notebooks, more papers, more newspapers, and the occasional call to James' cell phone. Randomly, at the touch of a newspaper, Matthew felt that familiar sensation as a premonition rushed to his mind. Four masked men break a door down, surprising the house's inhabitants, a young married couple and their two twin children, a boy and a girl. The woman quickly grabs her children, throwing herself over them for protection, while the man stands defiantly between the masked men and his family. He throws his hands out and two streaks of lightning, one from each hand, fly towards the men. Just before striking, a strange light flashes and the lightning rebounds back in the direction of the man, who barely dodges it. Before the man can react, three of the four intruders disappear and reappear around his wife and children. They grab his family and disappear in a haze. Horror struck, the man turns to unleash his fury on the remaining man, but he is not there. He turns around and finds the mysterious man suddenly in his face. With no time to react, he is punched in the face and taken by force to wherever his family is.
