Chapter 2

Sarah saw ghosts.

The whole room was full of them, drifting around her and Sister Domenica, some barely visible like wisps of smoke and others walking about looking as solid as the Necromancer.

The Sister was seated on the floor, a large mat laid underneath her and adorned with arcane symbols, additional markings added from powdered bone and charcoal. Over her head gaped a swirling black hole, like an upside down whirlpool reaching up into another world.

It was from this portal that the swarm of ghosts had come, drawn by the summons of her tutor. Sarah would have felt crowded except the spirits moved effortlessly through each other, seeming not to care if they intermingled. The only things they did not pass through was Sister Domenica on the floor and young Sarah sitting like a dental patient in the testing chair.

“You see them well enough, don’t you Miss Evermore?” said the Necromancer, her eyes closed and seemingly in a light trance.

“Uh-huh” agreed Sarah, bored already by the ghostly apparitions. Under the tutelage of Sister Domenica she was seeing dead people every Monday now, except on School Holidays. She was an Otherwordly Communicator, Grade Two, according to official Testing Centre records and the Necromancer was the closest thing they could find that matched her Ability. “I think one of them is my Uncle Rex. He died about three years ago. Mom always said his drinking was going to kill him and she was right”

Sister Domenica’s eyes snapped open to regard her student with a cold glare. Her head turned imperceptibly and she examined the semi-transparent spirit that Sarah had indicated.

“Announce thyself!” she commanded and the ghost faced her and its mouth moved, hissing and crackling like a brisk breeze over dead leaves. Sarah almost heard words in what the creature said and her eyes widened in surprise as she understood a single word – its name was indeed Rex!

The Sister nodded towards Sarah, a faint smile on her face for once, replacing the thin lipped grimace she usually gave her student.

“Speak to him, Miss Evermore. Make him understand you”

Sarah regarded the ghost of her Uncle curiously, wondering what her mom would ask if she were here.

“Um, Hi Uncle Rex” she began nervously. “It’s me, your niece Sarah. I’m the daughter of your cousin, Inga. Inga Evermore”

“Inngggaaaa” came the drawn out reply, the ghost’s eyes fixing on the girl. It drifted closer, the torso passing easily through a medical cabinet and testing equipment without pause. An arm’s length away it stopped, the twin dark pools of its eyes drawing Sarah inwards.

“Yeah, she was your first cousin” Sarah continued, her voice faltering under the regard of the dead man. “I guess that actually makes me your second cousin or something”

“Saarraaahhh” it uttered slowly, a hint of recognition coming into its eyes at last. Sarah felt the gaze holding her in place, her mind being touched by something cold and lifeless. Then the pale face lit up with a smile, warmth caressing her like a faint summer breeze.

“The naughty one!” the spirit of her Uncle said, suddenly as clear to her as if he was still alive. His hand extended to her and she saw one of the wrapped mints he always carried, hoping to disguise the smell of alcohol on his breath. It had never worked but Sarah remembered he would offer her one whenever they visited him.

His touch was barely felt, the faintest of tingles on her own open palm, yet the mint lay quite visible in her hand. She closed her fingers around it and immediately tasted the strong peppermint flavour on her tongue, too potent for her sister Carrie or brother Brent. After the first time he offered them, it was only Sarah who ever took one.

“Thanks Uncle Rex” she whispered and the ghost nodded happily to her. She opened her hand and the ghost of the mint was gone, the memory of the taste fading away.

Sister Domenica uttered a phrase in some old language, Latin she called it, and the ghosts began to drift into the portal, rising up and vanishing into its dark void.

“See-ya!” Sarah said to her relative and he too drifted upwards and into the portal. He was the last to go, his smile the way she remembered it and then the opening grew swiftly smaller and then it was gone. Only the white tiled ceiling lay above the girl and her tutor and the regular sounds and smells returned.

“That was well done, Miss Evermore” the Sister praised her lightly. “We will attempt a small Portal opening next time, using your own Ability” The Necromancer uncrossed her legs and stood, using one of the nearby cabinets to get herself upright.

“Here, let me help” Sarah said and leaped off the chair to put her arm under that of her tutor. The woman was not really that old she knew, but her body seemed frail and delicate as she helped her stand. Sarah had expected a reprimand, as the Necromancer refused all form of physical contact with her pupil. The young girl did not mind, as she had seen the Sister act the same way with everyone else at the Testing Centre.

“Thank you, Sarah” her tutor responded and withdrew her arm gently from the student’s. Sarah was stunned into silence for a few seconds, then grinned at the older woman.

“You’re welcome, Teach!” she declared and got a sharp rap on the top of her skull.

“My name is Sister Domenica, Miss Evermore” she replied testily and pointed to the mat on the floor imperiously. “Pack that away, please, and don’t spill any powders on the floor”

Sarah rubbed her head and watched as her tutor adjusted her long white robes, preparing to finish the session for the day.

“Sister, where do the ghosts go when they leave this world? You promised to explain it to me one day”

The woman paused then gestured to one of the two low stools in the room. She sat herself on the other and looked at her watch, an old fashioned one with a metal band and actual hands rather than a digital display.

“I suppose we have time” she agreed and Sarah sat down facing her, eager for once to learn something new. “Listen up, for I am only going to say this once”

“You have learned already about the two worlds, ours of the Light Side and the opposing world we call the Dark Side. They exist together as two halves of a giant sphere, with the Boundary lying between them”

“Yeah, I heard all about this from someone” agreed Sarah. “I can’t remember who told it to me”

Her tutor leaned forward and flicked a slender fingernail against the girl’s forehead.

“It was me, Miss Evermore” scolded her tutor. “To continue, these joined pair of worlds are referred to as the Sphere of the Worlds, also called The Now. The Light Side is the source of power for the Abilities of the Awakened such as yourself. The Dark Side is the source of magic for Adepts such as Witches, Warlocks and Necromancers”

“However, this Sphere of Worlds is itself bounded by two greater halves in what is called the Sphere of Existence. One half is the Before and the other is the After. We know little about the Before, as this is said to be the realm of the Gods and mighty beings such as Archangels and Demons. Many religions agree that the Souls of all beings in the Light and Dark Sides are created in the Before, sent into their lives by the great entities that dwell there”

“It is the After that is the concern of the Necromancers. Every soul will eventually find its way into the After, which religions will tell you is the place where Heaven, or Hell or some other kind of afterlife exists. In a way that is true, for different souls will go to certain realms of the After, however it is not always what their faith may have led them to expect!”

“So you really do pull the spirits of the dead back from Heaven?” wondered Sarah. “Or from Hell in Uncle Rex’s case?” That earned her another flick on the forehead, eliciting a yelp from the girl.

“Do not speak ill of the dead, Miss Evermore” her tutor warned. “They see and hear more of this world than you may know”

Sarah rubbed her forehead and wondered about something that had troubled her for some time.

“Sister Domenica, where do the Dragons come from then? I have been told they are not from the Dark Side and they are obviously not from our side, so where are their Realms?”

The older woman shrugged her shoulders, a gesture so uncharacteristic of her normally taciturn tutor.

“Perhaps the Void that lies Beyond” suggested the Sister. “It lies outside of all known Existence, but the little we know of the Void tells us life could not survive in such a place. From what you tell me of Stanley and his kind, they eat and breathe so it could not be hidden there. It is certainly an enigma”

“Hey, I know that word!” said Sarah brightly and then yelped as she got a third flick from the Necromancer. The bell sounded to signal the end of the day’s Testing and for once Sarah was disappointed. She still had so many more questions to ask!

“Can we talk about this some more at our next Testing Day, Sister Domenica?”

“Since you are finally showing some interest in my teachings, then I agree” her tutor answered with another rare smile. “Although the next Monday will be Christmas Eve and I believe you will be on break from School and Testing”

“Oh yeah, that’s right!” Sarah remembered with glee. “This is our last week of school before the holidays!”

“Indeed, it will be nice to take a break from having to teach such awful students for a while” admitted Sister Domenica. “Seeing them every week has been very draining on my soul”

Sarah looked with sudden concern at her tutor, her face reflecting her worry.

“How many students are you tutoring, Sister?”

“Only you, Miss Evermore” said her tutor and gave a spidery laugh at the dismay on Sarah’s face.

Miss Abrams the English Teacher packed the last of her class’ lesson plans away. It had been a slow day with most of her Year 7 students at the Testing Centre and only a handful of NOMAs to sit and do revision.

With the exams done for the year, even revision had been pretty pointless so she let her kids play word games and discuss their Christmas holiday plans. It was kind of ironic that this year she finally had enough money saved up for a decent trip somewhere, like Melbourne or even far off Perth, but her duties with the AURA Project meant she had to stay in Pan City.

She was wallowing in some deserved self-pity when there was a polite knock on the class door. It was open already so she glanced over and her face lit up at the sight of the School’s Head of Security, Fiona Smith.

“Hey, Fi-fi, come on in!” she called out in welcome, earning a frown of disapproval from the tall woman.

“Please Sofia, my name is Fiona” she admonished her good friend and room-mate. “It is a perfectly acceptable name granted to me by my friend Carmody. Why do you struggle to remember it?”

“Because I get this reaction every time!” laughed Sofia and after a moment Fiona joined her.

“Very well, So-so, we need to attend the Guard Post for a meeting with Eric”

“Sure, I’ll just grab my bag” Sofia agreed then did a double-take. “Hang on a moment, what did you call me?” Fiona did not reply, just smirked a little and went out of the door and Sofia had to run to catch up to her.

“Don’t be tardy, So-so” Fiona called to her over her shoulder.

=====

“I am not fat!” Stanley the Steam Dragon typed with two claws on the message board, the words appearing on the screen at the other end of the room where Eric was seated.

Eric sighed and glanced at the large open space filling the end of the Project team building, otherwise known as Stanley’s house. The dragon was not visible to him as such, rather he could detect a weird distortion in the space that Stanley occupied. It was becoming more and more distinct every day, as if his mind was beginning to accept the reality of the otherworldly creature.

“I didn’t say you were fat, Stanley” he said placatingly. “I stated that you appeared to have gotten bigger, both in mass and linear dimensions. The doorways we had fitted don’t seem to be accommodating your width as easily as they used to”

Eric spared a look at the main doorway that lead out to the school rooftop. The frames were scraped back to the bare metal and one side had buckled outwards, cracking part of the supporting wall.

“It is just a growth spurt” Stanley typed. “Now that I am reaching my mating age, my body is starting to fill out to my adult size”

That comment made Eric pause for a number of reasons, the bit about mating age in particular, but he had more immediate concerns.

“Stanley, just how big are you going to get?”

“Well, I am a male Dracoris Vapora so of course I will be smaller on average than the females” he tapped in response. “All of the Dracoris species follow that rule, even the biggest species of all, the Dracoris Inferno. As for me, I will definitely be smaller than my mother, Marlevitariously the Eighth. She is about thirty of your meters long”

“Okay, that is pretty big” admitted Eric. “As a guide for me, how big was your father?”

There was a long pause at the other end of the room, with no tapping of claws on the oversized keyboard to be heard.

“Stanley? Are you still there?”

A series of sharp taps could be heard and the words appeared on the display screen.

“I never knew him” Stanley typed. “He was lost before I was hatched, vanished while hunting for Sky Calves”

“I’m sorry. I never had any parents, so I don’t know how it must feel to lose one”

“It is no matter, Eric. They are all lost to me now, only this world and the friends who live in it are of any concern”

“Thanks Stanley. I am going to submit a request to my brother Two about having a bigger living space built for you. In the meantime we’ll get some builders in to widen the main doors so you can get in and out a lot more easily. How does that sound?”

“Just so long as nobody calls me fat!”

“Sure” Eric agreed readily. “No-one in the team would ever say that”

=====

“Wow! Did someone try and drive a truck through this door?” said Miss Abrams, running her hands over the damaged frame as she and Miss Smith examined the entrance to the Project building. “Stanley must be getting really fat!”

“Don’t say stuff like that please, Miss Abrams” Eric cautioned her from the table, a datapad open in front of him. “Stanley is very sensitive on that topic right now. Luckily he left a few minutes ago to visit Sarah at her tower”

“Of course, that was very insensitive of me” the teacher replied, hiding her smile behind a raised hand. She looked around the otherwise empty room and her smile faded. “Is your brother not joining us this evening?”

“Hmm? No, he has a previous engagement I believe” Eric answered, tapping his datapad to bring up some files. “However, his presence is not required as we have all the current details available”

“Says you” Miss Abrams muttered to herself and took a seat at the table. Miss Smith sat alongside of her friend, a faint smile of amusement visible in her usually flat expression. “Anyway, what is the big problem you needed to drag just me and Fiona here for? Why are the kids not involved?”

Eric’s own expression grew serious and he flicked the datapad to holo-display mode. A projected screen blossomed to life over the centre of the table, an overhead image of a school girl in an Eighth District High School uniform somewhere in a classroom.

The girl was dark haired, of Asian ancestry, with a wild look on her face as she hurled bolts of Pyrokinetic Fire at her class mates. One boy was struck by a bolt and fell in agony as his uniform caught fire. Moments later a teacher was seen spraying the boy with a fire extinguisher while another girl grappled the Pyro from behind, pinning her arms until a Security Guard arrived to stun the attacker with a taser wand.

“What the hell was that!” Miss Abrams gasped. “Don’t her tutors at the Testing Centre keep an eye out for those kinds of breakdowns?”

“The girl is a NOMA, Sofia” Miss Smith told her evenly. “My office has been advised of some of the details already, but I believe Eric has more information”

“A NOMA? So she self-Awakened in the middle of class?” That kind of thing happened, she knew that. Sarah and Carmody had gone through exactly that experience earlier in the year.

“You misunderstood, Miss Abrams” Eric interjected. “The girl in question is still a NOMA, verified by the Yamaguchi Testing Centre only yesterday. The Ability she manifested only happened due to a specific set of circumstances”

Miss Abrams looked in concern between Eric and her friend Fiona. She had a feeling she was not going to like what she was about to hear.

“The girl, Miss Kaitoshima, was rejected by the boy that morning. This was witnessed by a number of her fellow students and verified by security camera recordings. At some time before the incident you saw, she took an unknown drug. It is believed to have properties similar to the activation drugs given to potential Awakened at the Testing Centres”

“And the stress of her feelings for the boy combined with that drug to give her temporary Pyrokinesis?” wondered a stunned Miss Abrams. “Why the hell did she take that stuff in the first place? To get revenge for her broken heart?”

“It is not that simple, Sofia” answered her friend. “The drug was labelled as Heightened Experience, a legal mood elevator sold here in the City. It is intended to provide feelings of well being and supposed ‘cosmic awareness’ to the users. Naturally, it is only sold to adults but there is no doubt that underage users are obtaining doses from various dealers”

“Let me guess, what was in the sample the girl took was not Heightened Experience” Miss Abrams added.

“Correct” Eric responded. “Testing of the residue in her hypo-injector indicated it was a highly illegal derivative being made here in the Zone. We don’t know exactly what its purpose is but we are seeing this trend already in other cases around Pan City”

“The spontaneous Awakening of an Ability?” Miss Abrams. “Isn’t that what the World Parapsychic Development Organisation has been striving for ever since the last Global War? If everyone has an Ability, the hatred and persecution by the NOMAs will disappear”

Miss Smith shook her head sadly and turned to face her friend.

“The Abilities don’t last, they fade soon after” she explained. “More importantly, the ones who manifest the Abilities become violent and angry, completely out of control. That girl, Miss Kaitoshima, was a quiet and gentle person. All her friends and teachers agreed. Then the drug took her over and you saw the result”

Eric nodded his head at her comments. It matched all the data he had so far as well.

“We don’t know who is making this drug or how it is being distributed here in Pan City. Jericho-Two wants us to start making investigations in District Ten as discretely as possible. I don’t want to alarm the other Project members for now, so please keep this quiet until I say otherwise”

“Understood, Eric” said Miss Smith and she glanced at her friend. “Are you Okay with this, Sofia?”

“Yeah, for now” agreed Miss Abrams. “Just one question though, this derivative of the original drug, what is it called?”

Eric was slow to respond, then he realised she needed to know.

“They call it HEx” he answered.