Darkfeather Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Paragon Academy, Los Angeles, CA, 2001

  1.

  Fort Bragg Military Base, CA, the Present:

  2.

  3.

  US Air Force Base, Kokomo, Indiana, Three Years Ago, 2016

  4.

  Fort Bragg Military Base, CA, the Present

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  Paragon Academy, Los Angeles, CA, Two Years Ago, 2017

  10.

  Mendocino Woodlands, CA, the Present

  11.

  Fort Bragg, Project Jedi, Ten Years Ago, 2009

  12.

  Fort Bragg Military Base, CA, the Present

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  More from Andrew Demcak

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  About the Author

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  Copyright

  Darkfeather

  By Andrew Demcak

  The Elusive Spark: Book Three

  James, Keira, Lumen, and Paul—teens with special abilities granted by their alien DNA—bonded over hardship, becoming friends and sometimes more. But now they’re held in Fort Bragg and subjected to painful tests by the evil Dr. Albion, and those ties are coming loose just when they need them the most. Budding romances and family relationships are tested as each teen struggles to choose where to stand and who can be trusted. Reunions with lost family members and the possibility of love with new allies strain already tense relationships, and not every heart will survive unscathed. But the Star Children are the only ones who can command an alien spaceship needed to intercept the Nibiru object—an unidentified celestial mass plummeting toward the planet. If they can’t work together, an unimaginable catastrophe will strike the earth, and they’re the only ones who can stop it.

  For Roland & Sridevi

  Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  The Paragon Academy, Los Angeles, CA, 2001

  1.

  “KAREN, WAKE up!” the beige-colored alien, UBE, said as he shook the unconscious woman on the Army bunk. “You have to hurry. The security fence is only going to be unelectrified for another twenty minutes. This is your only chance of getting out of here!” UBE threw his three-fingered hands in the air and paced in a small circle.

  Karen Darkfeather rolled over. She rubbed her hazel eyes and pulled her long red hair away from her face. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the command center beneath the Paragon Academy. She yawned and stretched, taking in a deep breath of the recycled air. In all these months, she still hadn’t gotten used to living in a retrofitted cavern, day and night simulated by banks of sodium lamps bolted to the cave ceiling. Everything down here is one big secret, she thought absently.

  Karen shifted in her white lab coat and undid the top three buttons. It was so hot and stuffy in UBE’s humidified chamber. The three-foot tall alien stood attentively beside her, wringing his hands, a look of grave concern in his huge dark eyes.

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s time for you to go!” he continued while waving her up off the bunk. “Come along. Dr. Albion is off-site, and they won’t be expecting someone to escape over the fence by the XiCOM towers.”

  “This is all happening so quickly. Are you sure this will work?”

  “Girlfriend,” UBE said and rolled his huge dark eyes. “You’re the one who got herself pregnant with stolen Zeta-Reticulan DNA. You should have known the Army wouldn’t let you keep your baby.”

  “But I’m only eight weeks pregnant,” Karen said, rubbing her belly. She felt the fullness of her unborn child, even this early. She let her hand rest there for a moment. There she is, my precious baby growing inside. She. I know she’s a girl. Keira. I won’t let them take you, Keira. I won’t! Karen shook her head. “Maybe I can still make some kind of bargain? I mean, I’m still their employee, right?”

  “You were their employee until you broke every rule in your contract by trying to smuggle top secret government material off the base—your unborn child! I can’t hide you in here any longer,” UBE replied in a scolding tone. He turned from Karen and crossed to the far side of the small metallic room. He put his hand on what looked like a block of solid marble the size of a filing cabinet. It began to glow bright white and then opened along the side. A metal tray slid out. In it were two strange objects: a gold chain with a black stone pendant in the shape of two conjoined suns, and the other, a small stone box about the size of a deck of cards that had the twin suns inlaid in gold. UBE retrieved the articles, then walked over and placed them in Karen’s hands.

  “What are these?”

  “These are for Keira….” The alien paused.

  “But how did you…?”

  “We are psychically connected, Karen.” UBE smiled kindly at her. “You are my only friend here at Paragon. I can see your thoughts. In time, with the help of your unborn child, you may start seeing mine.”

  “But what are these?”

  “This,” UBE said as he picked up the pendant, “is a Heart’s Compass. It will bring your daughter back to you or to me, if ever she gets lost. And this is a hjärta kassi, a Heart’s Box. Once we close it, it will only open again for one person, its true owner, Keira. I want you to write her a letter and explain what is happening to you and place it inside. At some point after she is born, you will need to separate from her so the Paragon Academy can’t find her, maybe offer her up for adoption. You will give her the Heart’s Box and Compass so she’ll understand and find her way back to us.”

  Karen’s face flushed with anger. “I can’t! I won’t! I’m not going to give up my child.”

  “Karen, it’s the only way if you want her to be free and not be a slave of the US Government,” UBE said and blinked coldly. “You know what they’ll do to her: the experiments, the painful genetic tests, the endless rounds of bloodwork and tissue samples.”

  Karen agreed sadly and then sat in silence on the green bunk. “UBE, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I’ve messed everything up.”

  “On the contrary, this is all part of something greater than the two of us, my dear,” UBE said wistfully. “I only have seen one small part, and it will take place sixteen years from this very day. That’s when I’ll reconnect with my life partner, EBE, and Keira will begin looking for you. That is when Nibiru is arriving. And at that time, EBE and I will be together, and you will meet Keira and her new Zetan siblings.”

  Karen sank into stunned silence again. She had no idea what UBE had spoken of. But there was no time to ask questions; she knew she had to get going. The well-maintained security perimeter would be down for maintenance for a short time. She’d have to climb over the usually electrified fence and then head down into the canyons and find her way from the Paragon Academy to the nearest freeway and hitchhike. UBE was right; this was her only chance, right now.

  “I’ll miss you so much,” Karen said, standing and embracing the small being, the tears already forming in the corners of her eyes. “You’ve done so much for me.”

  “Oh, twaddle; it is I who is grateful for you,” UBE continued as he hugged tighter. “Now, hurry. You have no time to lose.” UBE moved over to the sealed aluminum door and waved his hand over it. It opened with a hissing sound. “Go along the hallway to the Gamma corridor, and then go to the nearest freight elevator. Here’s the eleva
tor key I stole from one of the guards. Take the elevator up to ground level. From there you’ll have to run. Now go!” UBE commanded and pushed Karen, trembling, out into the hallway. She broke into a sprint down the hall and ran as fast as she could. She turned the corner, not looking back even once. The alien waited by the door patiently until he couldn’t hear Karen’s footsteps anymore, then turned and went back inside, the automatic door closing behind him.

  “I hope she’ll be all right,” he said sadly to himself, shaking his bulbous head. “She has to be, for all our sakes.”

  Fort Bragg Military Base, CA, the Present:

  2.

  “SEE WHAT you can do with this piece of hardware, James,” Dr. Elizabeth Albion said. From behind the tempered glass of the observation booth, she pointed to an open computer hard drive in front of the teenager. Dr. Albion pulled her long white hair back and tied it up on top of her head in a neat bun. “Can you look inside and see what files are on there?”

  The curly-haired sixteen-year-old stared coldly at the white-coated doctor. James was strapped to a metal exam chair. He blinked his blue eyes, glanced at the device, then back to Dr. Albion. He made no attempt to do anything else as he glared at the doctor. “Come, now, James. You don’t want me to punish one of your friends, do you?” Dr. Albion said with a nasty grin. “Keira has been so cooperative, and I’d hate to have to do something terrible to your boyfriend, Paul.”

  “I keep telling you, he’s not my boyfriend!” James shouted at the doctor. “You leave them both alone!”

  “Then do as I say and no one gets hurt.”

  James reached across the nylon restraints on his biceps and rubbed the silver cuffs on his wrists. He felt them deadening his power, sucking it away like two vampires, muting his full potential. “You need to turn these things off first,” James said as he held his wrists up a few inches.

  “That’s not necessary,” the doctor replied. “You only need a small amount of your power to break into this hard drive. I wouldn’t dream of giving you the opportunity to use your full power against us. You’ve gotten away from us twice before, but that won’t happen again.”

  James continued to glare at the doctor in the observation booth.

  “Aren’t you curious what’s on the hard drive? We just received it from the North Koreans.”

  “Why can’t you have a computer hacker break into it? What do you need me for?”

  The doctor smiled. “Ahh, that’s a good question, James. I always liked that about you, your intelligence. This drive is protected by a small incendiary device. We can’t access it in any physical way. One wrong move and it detonates. Have you ever played the game Operation? It’s just like that, only you die if you touch the sides. We need someone who can get in without touching the drive and setting off the bomb. So, do be careful James. I’m safe in here, but you’ll get the full force of the blast if something goes wrong.”

  A rage grew in his stomach. This was the same woman who tricked his mother into giving him to the Paragon Academy two years ago so they could experiment on him. The same woman who sent murderous clones and a bloodthirsty demon after him and his friends Keira, Lumen, Paul, and Tenzing just a few weeks ago. She also tried to remove their extraterrestrial powers with a deadly operation, but that thankfully had failed. And now she wanted his cooperation?

  But what choice do I have? James thought.

  “What if the files are all in Korean?” James asked. “You need Lumen here; she could read them. Too bad you still haven’t captured her.”

  “We’re working on getting Ms. Kim back here ASAP,” Dr. Albion said into the microphone. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  “You won’t catch her. She’s too smart.”

  “We’ll just have to see who’s smarter, won’t we?” Dr. Albion said casually.

  James resigned himself to the task at hand and began to focus his energy. Even with the osmium cuffs deadening his power, he was still at about 10 percent of his ability. Static electricity began to crackle and pop in the air in front of him. White sparks snapped and fizzed, those elusive sparks, dancing in midair. He let his mind drift out onto the electric charges, leaping from one spark to another like stones across a stream, until he was finally inside the busy hard drive. Zeros and ones buzzed past his consciousness like angry bees. He saw the files spinning away on the drive. Then he saw it: a file put there just for him to find. It read: Very good, James. I knew we’d be able to work together again. His mind recoiled and slipped back into his skull.

  “What the fuck?” James shouted. “This was all a trick to see if I’d cooperate with you?”

  “Yes, James,” the doctor confirmed. “And you passed with flying colors.”

  “And the bomb?”

  “Use your brains. You are far too valuable to us to risk losing you like that. Especially if what we know about the Nibiru object is correct. You’re more valuable to us now than ever before.”

  “The what object?” James asked.

  A red light began flashing in the observation booth, and a hidden speaker crackled into life.

  “Dr. Albion, we need you at the North Gate immediately. Asmodeus is back with the package.”

  “I’ll be along presently,” Dr. Albion answered. “Well, James, that concludes our tests for today. You’re free to go back to the dorms.” She pushed a button unlocking the restraints and released the teen, who stood up, rubbing his arms. “It looks like you’ll be eating your words about Ms. Kim, after all.” Dr. Albion quickly exited.

  James knew “the package” they were talking about had to be his telepathic friend Lumen Kim, the last of the Paragon runaways who hadn’t been captured yet. His heart sank that they had finally caught her, but he was happy they would be together again. Lumen would help him escape. Another thing made him sick to his stomach: Asmodeus, the demon, bringing her to Fort Bragg. He had sworn to sacrifice both Lumen and Keira to satisfy his bloodlust when he had the chance. Obviously, he didn’t have access to Keira anymore, and clearly he hadn’t had time to do anything to Lumen. But it made James nauseous to think about. Paragon had promised both girls to Asmodeus when they were done experimenting on them.

  And Tenzing. What about Tenzing? Was he with them? What happened to him? I’m not going back to the dorms. Forget that!

  James moved quickly from the examination room and out into the adjacent hallway. He caught a glimpse of Dr. Albion’s coat disappearing behind a closing door at the far end. James ran after her and opened the door carefully. He looked outside. No MPs were on patrol. For some strange reason, unlike at the Paragon Academy, James wasn’t supervised all the time here at Fort Bragg. None of them were. He had free run of the dorms, barracks, and base. But that was probably because no one could escape from Fort Bragg, aka, The Dome.

  Only the underground levels were off-limits.

  The doctor headed toward the wooden structure that served as the North Gate. Her high heels clicked loudly on the heat-treated tarmac. James still hadn’t gotten used to how weird the plasma dome made the sunlight look: like twisting rainbows wiggling around where it fell around his sneakers. Dr. Albion said the nanopartical dome made the whole place invisible to anyone outside, and it was impossible to get in or out without a special key. It protected Project Jedi completely. James passed through the dome only once when they brought him inside. It felt like walking into electrified Jell-O. With the cuffs now on his wrists, trying to pass through the dome in the other direction would be a death sentence. The cuffs were programmed to invert their wearer’s power if they met with the dome’s energy signature. If someone tried to pass through, they’d implode; all that would be left would be a pile of broken, bloody bones.

  From behind a parked Jeep, James observed a tall black-and-white something, most likely Asmodeus, bringing a girl with long black hair through the dome portal.

  Is that Lumen?

  The dome distorted everything on the other side. As he got closer, James could see the demon’s whole body;
it was covered with deep black burn marks that ran over his pasty skin. They crisscrossed like markings on a map.

  Yep, that’s Asmodeus all right.

  The girl struggled against the demon, but he pulled her inside the dome.

  It is Lumen! James was sure.

  Dr. Albion walked over and was saying something to them. Then James heard Asmodeus and the doctor laugh loudly at the same time. Lumen glared at Dr. Albion as several MPs milled around the trio.

  “James!”

  James turned and saw Paul coming. He ran over and hunkered down, trying not to be noticed. He sidled up alongside James. Maybe it was because he was so muscular or his black flattop was so severe, but Paul looked older than James.

  “They got Lumen!” James informed Paul as he brushed against him.

  “I can see,” Paul said and shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “I was getting used to how nice and quiet it was without her.”

  James glared at Paul who smirked back.

  “And that asshole demon came here too,” James added.

  “I don’t see Tenzing, do you?”

  “No.” James craned his neck around the Jeep to look.

  “But that’s a good thing, right?” Paul asked. “If they didn’t catch him, maybe he’s still on the outside and he’ll help us break out.”

  James stared at Paul. “It’s so funny how one moment you don’t like Tenzing and you call him a parasite, and the next moment, because he can help us out, you like him.”

  “Hey, I’m looking out for Number One, and that’s me. What can I say?”

  “I hope you’re kidding,” James said doubtfully. “Maybe they’ve done something terrible to Tenzing.”

  A struggle erupted between the black-and-white demon and the guards. Arms were flailing. Lumen jumped back but was grabbed before she could run away. Dr. Albion threw something in the air that exploded into a cloud of fine blue power. Asmodeus suddenly began to shrink as the guards slapped a pair of power-deadening cuffs on his wrists. When the smoke cleared, the demon was gone, and in his place stood a redheaded boy. There was something strange about the boy’s eyes, but it was hard to tell from this distance.