| Chapter 1 �Hey Keery!� Nathalie Ciarana turned quickly, her long red curls catching the light spring breeze and sweeping across her face so that she had to swipe one hand across her face to clear it. She picked up her motorcycle helmet from the black seat and tucked it under her arm as she waited for the person to catch up. Blaise Kensington was running towards her, he seemed tired which was odd because he was normally a fast runner. By the time that Blaise caught up with her, Nathalie had already leaned against her motorcycle a custom built Ducati formula 600 super bike, tired of standing. She had had to convince her father that she was going to start drag racing with it when she bought it, though she intended to race it one day, but at only eighteen years of age, she still had plenty of time. �What�s up Blaise?� Nathalie asked, but put her hand to her head and squeezed the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes up tight, suddenly hit with one of the massive never-know-when-its-gonna-hit headaches that she had been getting for the past few days; especially when Blaise was around. After a moment her headache disappeared and she felt normal again. /These aren�t just headaches,/ she thought. /These are mind-warping, gut-wrenching migraines./ After a moment, the headache faded and she felt normal again. /I have to figure out why the hell that keeps happening./ She thought to herself for the millionth time. She thought she saw Blaise smirk as he drew closer, like he knew something that she didn�t but didn�t want her to know, but the look disappeared before he got to her side. �Nothin� much� he said, bending over to catch his breath, hands on knees. �I just wanted to talk to you before you headed out.� �We were just talking,� Nathalie chuckled. �On the phone, this morning, for two hours.� �I know,� he said. �There�s something that I had to say, but didn�t say it earlier.� �Okay,� she said crossing her arms. �Talk.� Blaise swallowed like he was regretting what he was going to say, or was trying to think about how to say it and how much to say. �Out with it bud,� Nathalie said, glaring at him through slitted eyes as another headache overpowered her again. When it had passed, she straddled the bike and started raising her helmet over her head before Blaise made up his mind and reached out, grabbing her arm and pushing her hands down into her lap. Nathalie gaped at him. �What?� She asked looking at him out of the corner of narrowed blue eyes. She like Blaise, sometimes not quite sure why. There seemed to be something hidden within him that struck a cord with something inside her in a place that she had yet to discover. She liked him, but he took forever to get to the point. �Something is going to happen today.� Blaise said certainly, without a doubt. Nathalie didn�t laugh and she didn�t shrug off his touch. The hand on her arm seemed to spread warmth through her. Most people would laugh at that kind of statement, but not Nathalie. She had known him far too long to do that. He knew things before they happened, especially when it pertained to her. Hundreds of years ago he would have been called a seer or at worst, a witch, today, he was just considered weird. �What is it?� She asked with no sign of annoyance in her voice, instead, it was worry. �I�m not sure.� He said, shaking his head. �It wasn�t clear.� �Oh,� Nathalie said. That was weird; Blaise�s visions were always clear as a bell, every detail vibrant and strong. Finally, she detached his hand with one of her own. He curled his hand around to grasp hers for a moment before releasing her. Nathalie shook her head to get her hair back before tugging her full-faced helmet over her head. She clipped the straps under her chin. �Give me a hint?� She asked, her smooth voice slightly muffled by the helmet. �Could you see anything?� Blaise shook his head sadly. �I can�t,� he said. �It was not clear at all. I just know that something will happen, not whether it�s good or bad.� Thanks,� Nathalie said. She started the bike and leaned to one side to pop the kickstand up with her foot. Blaise set his hand on hers one more time as she reached for the clutch. �Be careful,� he said, tender concern showing in his golden eyes, another part of him that would have condemned him in another time. His eyes weren�t just brown that looked gold, they were like a hawk�s eyes, tawny and sharp. �I will.� Blaise moved his head and stepped back. Nathalie put the bike in gear and roared away. As she turned the corner not twenty feet away, she looked back and Blaise was no where in sight. * * * Blaise stood on the sidewalk for a moment, watching her ride away. He smiled as he felt a familiar presence in his mind. /�You are so evil.�/ He heard and immediately recognized it as Julie Andrews. Blaise leaned casually against a nearby tree and closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind to locate her. He sensed that she was sitting near one of the windows in the ship. /�I didn�t want to tell her that she is gonna get her wish, is should be a surprise.�/ He said, his eyes still closed. /�And I hope she does soon, �cause her headaches are starting to give me a headache, I feel every one.�/ Julie laughed. /�Are you coming back?� She asked, her Australian accent was thick even in her telepathic voice. /�Yeah,�/ Blaise said. He opened his eyes and walked down the street a few feet into an alley between the television store and the bakery. He took a quick glance around to make sure that he was alone, and teleported, reappearing on the ledge behind Julie in the ship. She turned and smiled. Julie was beautiful, but not as beautiful as Keery. Where Nathalie had fiery red hair, blazing blue eyes and matching personality, Julie had short curly brown hair that reached barely to her shoulders, pulled back with a headband as usual, pale, clear skin except for a brown spot about the size of an elongated saucer on the back of her right shoulder, a skin disease that doctors had been unable to cure. She never bothered to cover it, and wore tank tops most of the time. She was tall, thin, and light-boned, built like a swimmer, and had a tendency to be brash and arrogant. She was eighteen years old and had practically lived in the water. She had grown up on the Sunshine Coast of Australia and was now working as a lifeguard on one of the beaches of Surfer�s Paradise. She had come from there, he could tell, her red duffel bag was tucked into a corner nearby. �Hi,� she said smiling. �Hi yourself.� He bent down to kiss the mark on her shoulder, a friendly gesture that he had done thousands of times, and jumped down the few feet to the floor. The ship was in fact an alien space craft that had crash-landed on Earth a long time ago and had waited for man to evolve. Man went from a primitive ape-like species to the technological society that we know today. The ship wasn�t waiting for the techno man to evolve, but for the next stage, humans that would call themselves Tomorrow People. They were the next stage, humans with special powers; the power to teleport and the ability to speak telepathically. The ship had waited until it had detected that the TP�s had evolved then sent out a beacon call to bring them to the ship. The beacon was a call that once a person�s mind was evolved enough, or as they liked to say �broken out,� would pull them to an island in the South Pacific where the ship had been mostly buried in the sand. It stuck up like a huge piece of driftwood in the beach. The island was unknown to those other than the people that the ship had called to it. Julie swung her feet over the ledge and stood. She looked out the window to watch a little fish swim by, she followed it with her finger making clicking noises. She traced one of the large alien runes that lined the windows. They were rectangular view ports within circular openings, decorated with strange script that looked like a strange mixture of English and Japanese, all angular and alien. �Why don�t you want to tell her?� Julie asked reading his thoughts and his face. �She loved that TV show about us so much.� Blaise said. �Every wish that she has ever made has been that she had special powers, to be one of us. I know, I�ve heard it. I didn�t want to tell her that her wish would come true. I didn�t want her excitement to override her judgment. If she stays in the dark, she�ll be less likely to get hurt. If she�s not on her bike when she teleports she�ll be fine.� �If she is?� Julie asked, brown eyebrows raised high over her blue eyes, almost as electric and glowing as Keery�s. That was something that they all shared, strange eye color. His were gold, Keery and Julie�s were both blue. Some had more normal looking eyes, including the earliest to break out, and some had far stranger eyes. �If she is,� he took a deep breath, and let it out in an explosive rush, �she�ll either take it with her or she�ll come without it, and it�ll probably crash. She loves that bike so much and I would hate to see it damaged by either seawater, �cause you know that we all end up in the water, or by smashing into something.� Julie nodded. She thought for a moment and Blaise could sense her mind working hard. �What?� He asked sensing that she had come to a conclusion. Julie moved from the window and moved to the center column in the circular room. It had the same low seating space with the same decoration of alien glyphs. The center column was a thick, glowing column that tapered up to a few narrow pipes that fed up into the ceiling. When the ship communicated with them, which it did on occasion, the column lit up and emitted a deep hum. Julie touched a pattern in the corners of a few glyphs and a recessed area lit up and a glass of orange liquid appeared. The ship could provide food and drink for them at times. �What are you thinking?� Blaise asked, crossing his arms over his chest, stretching the leather of his jacket tight across the back of his shoulders. Julie turned to him with a bright smile. �If the yank cares so much about her bike. We should find a way to make sure that she�s not on the bike when she succepts to the beacon and we have another trainee TP on our hands.� �And just how do we do that?� Blaise asked, unsure of what she meant. �We steal it.� Blaise choked, and started coughing. �What?!� He croaked like a bullfrog. �One of us can go and take her bike and hide it, that way she won�t have any way of getting hurt when the beacon gets her.� �And we�ll have every chance of getting hurt if we touch it.� Blaise said and swallowed the frog in his throat which settled as a ball of ice in his stomach. �She would kill me if I touched it or found out that I had a hand in stealing it at all.� �No worries mate,� Julie said. �I�ll go.� �Jules,� Blaise said. He took the glass from her and took a drink, then placed it back on the tray where it had come from and it disappeared with a faint hum. �What?� �Take a helmet, it�s the law where she lives. Plus, if her awareness is still dulled, she won�t recognize you as easily.� He sighed, defeated. �If she found you out, and she probably will anyway, she�d turn you over to the government or the Darks, if she knew about them.� Julie�s face blanched. �Yeah,� she said, voice just barely above a whisper. �I�ll remember the helmet.� Blaise smiled. �Do that.� �Bastard,� she said, and bent to retrieve her duffel bag and disappear from the room. /She�ll forget about it./ /�No I won�t.�/ Julie said angrily. Blaise smiled again, but it was rueful and tight. He made no small threat either. The government, more specifically the FBI had a division what was investigating the new teleporter phenomenon that had been growing more and more prevalent in recent years and had scientist baffled and special effects engineers wondering how it was done so well. Blaise turned to one of the windows. �She�s gonna hate me for doing this to her.� He said to the ship, thinking of Nathalie. The main column lit up and emitted its familiar hum which Blaise took to mean that the ship was agreeing with him. * * * Nathalie parked her bike on the tree-shaded street in front of a small bakery. She loved this small rural town in central New York. It was full of small businesses that had been open for a long time, some for almost a hundred years. There was a minimum of superstores in the area, the closest Wal-Mart was over an hour away. She unclipped her backpack from the seat behind her and swung it up onto her shoulder. She pulled off her helmet and tucked it under her arm as she headed down the street and walked into the small bookstore on the corner. �Hi, Keery,� the girl at the counter said to her. �Hi Morgan,� Nathalie said to her. They were good friends, having graduated from high school together. The bookstore had been in Morgan�s family for over a hundred years. As she walked further into the store, the floor emitted its usual creaks and groans. Nathalie managed to return Morgan�s smile, but it was hard, her headaches had returned stronger than ever, it was as if a thousand bees had suddenly been trapped in her skull. And she had to put her hand on top of the newspaper rack to steady herself. �Are you okay Keery?� Morgan asked, coming around the end of the counter to her side, helping to steady her. Her slanted eyes were wide with concern. �Yeah,� Nathalie said darting a quick glance at her. �I�m fine.� She managed to walk, a little dizzily, to the back of the store and selected the new Stephen King novel that her friend Danielle had recommended to her. She moved back to the counter to pay, grabbing a TV Guide on her way up. She was paying for the books when the sound of a revving motorcycle pierced through the buzzing in her head, a rev that was all too familiar. Her head snapped up just in time to see her motorcycle zip down the street on its rear wheel as the thief pulled up on the handlebars. Her mouth dropped open, then she felt like passing out as her headache doubled. �That�s my bike!� She yelled and Morgan turned to look. �Some jerk is stealing my bike!� Nathalie dropped her backpack on the floor and left her wallet on the counter as she ran out the door. �Hey!� She yelled down the street at the thief. �Stop!� She knew that it would do no good to yell because the thief wouldn�t just stop and say, �here, I�m sorry that I just tried to steal your bike. Here, have it back.� Nathalie broke into a run, but knew what her bike could do. It was specially designed to fit her, and though it could go faster, she had already gotten it up to about 120 miles per hour. People were stopping to stare at her as she chased her bike around the corner. �Stop! Please!� She yelled in desperation as the red motorcycle became a little red dot as it sped away. /Man,/ she thought, /if ever I had special powers, now would be the time, �cause then I could catch that SOB that�s stealing my ride./ Nathalie frantically looked around for someone to help, but the street was deserted. The buzzing in her ears grew louder, causing her to sink to her knees in agony, and black spots danced in front of her eyes. Light blinded her and the world disappeared. * * * Morgan watched Nathalie run out of the bookstore and followed her as far as the doorway. She called out to her friend, �what�s going on?� but in her mind she knew. She could sense it. Nathalie was breaking out. /Finally!/ Morgan had sensed it in her for weeks and had begun to wonder if she was ever going to break out. Morgan DiPietro was a second generation Tomorrow Person, her mother, Amanda Gage-DiPietro had been a light. Morgan herself was one of the few Tomorrow People who were neither Light nor Dark, but able to change sides when it suited them; right now she was a Dark, but that could change. Her mother had wanted her to be a Light too. She was the only one of seven children who had received their mother�s gift. Morgan saw it as a gift, though the only thing that she saw as a curse was the fact that she could change sides. Had she been born one or the other, things would have been much easier, but she had not and that made her different. She was neither, and thus had no where that she belonged. She liked the freedom to choose, but she hated the fact that the Darks depended on her both because she, unlike other TP�s could kill, if she wanted to, and also for the fact that she could go freely between the two spaceships, without any effect on her powers. But she was never fully trusted on either side because of it. Her mother had died when Morgan had been four, and her youngest brother Jonathon had been only a few months old. The downside of the war between the Lights and Darks was that a TP did not have a long life expectancy. At 37, her mother had lived to a ripe old age. Most of the Tomorrow People who fought, died before they were twenty years old. Though they couldn�t kill, the guerilla war always found a way to make use of snares, mines, and pits that inhibited a TP�s power and allowed them to be killed by wild animals or starvation. Her mother had been caught in a snare in Egypt and had died from dehydration while a group of Darks looked on laughing and torturing her, trying to get the location of the Light�s ship. The only reason that Morgan was a Dark was because, right now, there was a plan in the works that intrigued her, but things could go the other way quickly. Plus, those that killed her mother were long dead. Morgan shook her head, clearing out the thoughts of her mother as she saw Nathalie run down the street. Morgan pulled the door to the shop closed and followed her, staying back so that Nathalie would not see her. When Nathalie rounded the corner, Morgan did not follow, but stood and peered around, waiting. Her presence was growing ever stronger as each second passed as the shock of having her bike stolen triggered her powers. The bike roared away, driven by that brat Julie Andrews. If there was one Light that she couldn�t stand, it was Julie. Nathalie called out one more time in desperation, then collapsed to her knees as the massive migraine of sound and color that everyone got before they broke out hit her like a ton of bricks. /�Go Keery,�/ Morgan thought to her just as she teleported. Morgan then saw Andrews stop and pull into an alley, probably to teleport herself and Nathalie�s bike somewhere else. /Cute,/ she thought, /stealing the bike so that it wouldn�t get damaged./ /�Morgan?�/ She heard a voice in her ear and recognized it as their leader, Jake. /�Yeah?�/ /�Is she out?�/ /�Yeah, she�s out.�/ /�Good,�/ he said. /�Don�t tell anyone else. I�ll take the liberty myself after I see her in person.�/ Morgan reached out with her mind and located Jake, sitting at home on the couch in his bedroom. /�Fine,�/ she sighed. /"Spoil my fun.�/ /�Don�t lie,�/ Jake said, tsking at her. /�I know that you weren�t going to tell anyone. Don�t forget Morgan. You may have the power to kill, to change sides, but you don�t want to end up like your mother if you betray us.�/ Morgan felt anger flare up. /�Don�t worry Jake,�/ she hissed. /�You have nothing to fear from me.�/ /�I�d better not.�/ Jade left her mind with the words hanging between them. Morgan leaned against the side of the building, exhausted from here little mental fist-to-cuffs with Jake. The trouble was that she didn�t know if he had anything to fear from her or not. She was starting to think that the power to change sides really was more of a curse than she thought. * * * Julie had found that it was not all that hard to jury-rig a motorcycle as long as you knew what you were doing. She had driven and raced motorcycles often enough to learn. She laughed in exhilaration as she roared away. She could see why Nathalie loved this bike so much, the rush that one got from riding it was amazing. Glancing back she saw Nathalie running at top speed behind her. She was calling futilely, knowing that she was not going to stop. Julie could sense a growing awareness of her in her mind, a sign that she was �breaking out.� She kept looking behind her, waiting. She saw Nathalie crumple to the ground in pain as the buzzing became too much, and almost felt like stopping, feeling guilty. Then she saw the bright flash of light that told her that Nathalie had teleported. Once she saw the flash, she pulled the brake and turned into a nearby alleyway. She looked around, then got a good grip on the bike and teleported herself out of the alley and into a small room on the ship that was far away from any place that Nathalie would go. She took off her helmet and set it on the floor near the motorcycle then teleported to the main chamber. * * * Blaise sat on one of the window seats, an open book on his lap, looking out, and listening with his mind. He sensed Julie�s elation at stealing Nathalie�s bike. He had always been in tune with Nathalie, but he sensed a growing presence of her in his mind. He heard her final thought again wishing for special powers so that she could catch that SOB that was stealing her bike. Blaise had to chuckle at that thought, he guessed that Julie had heard it too, and that if she had, she was probably having a good laugh over it too. He sensed a teleport aperture open nearby and felt a new presence. Nathalie had arrived, and had landed in the ocean, just like they had predicted, he could see the ripples in the water, but he could not see her. He sensed another open and close as Julie appeared in the room. �You�re lazy.� He said with a small smile, eyes intent on the window. Julie smiled. �Not lazy, just practical.� She said. �I wanted to be here when she got here.� �Where�s her bike?� Blaise asked, turning to regard her with worry in his eyes. �She�ll have my hide for a purse if anything happens to it.� �Don�t worry,� Julie consoled. �It�s here. And we did it for her own good.� �You�d better hope so.� Julie crossed the room to his side. �Are you gonna go up and meet her on the beach or make her come through the tunnel?� Her fingers toyed with her necklace a silver pendant in the shape of a three pointed knot, turned so that two points faced up and the third, slightly longer in length, pointed down. It was a necklace that they all wore tucked under their clothes, in differing sizes and setting shapes, the same design as on the show. �She�s watched enough of the show to know how to get down here.� Blaise said closing his book and crossing his ankles. �Just give her a minute and she�ll be here.� * * * SPLASH!! Nathalie crashed into the water and came up to the surface sputtering. �What the--?� She cried, coughing. She looked around herself, treading water made difficult by hampering clothing, especially her leather riding jacket that was now probably ruined. It was sea water, she could taste it and the water was warm, not at all the bitter cold of the lakes near her home; which made her all the more confused. One moment she had been in the middle of the street, collapsed because of a headache, miles away from any sizeable body of water, the next she was treading water in the middle of what she guessed was a tropical ocean. There was nothing to be seen but ocean around her except for a small island directly in front of her. She was being bounced to the shore by the waves of the tide, but she was still fifty feet away from the shore. There was something vaguely familiar about the island, but she could not put her finger on it. As she swam closer to the beach, there was nothing to see on the seemingly deserted island. She crawled out onto the sand and stood and started walking along the shore to the other side of the small island. There, what she had thought of as a tall dead tree was clear to see. After looking at it for a moment, she realized where she had seen the strange formation sticking out of the ground before. She recognized it as the spaceship from The Tomorrow People, one of her favorite television shows of all time. The ship was big, rising nearly thirty feet from the sand and nearly ten feet taller than the surrounding palm trees. It was slightly different in color, the ship being slightly bluish in color instead of the brown drift wood color on the show. This ship, if she was not dreaming�which she still wasn�t sure of yet�was set back in the woods a little and really looked like a dead tree. A tall, bluish, dead tree. She let out a small whoop of delight, hoping to God that if this was a dream, that she would never wake up. Everything was beginning to come clear. She moved toward the ship and fell to her knees before a large round blue disk set in the ground, the same strange alien writing was set into a border about eight inches tall around the three foot wide bluish disk. Nathalie smiled. �I know this!� She said. She reached up with her right arm, struggling to move under the heavy wet leather. She waved her hand in a circle over the script as she remembered from the show. Nothing happened. Confused, she reached out and tried again. Nothing. �Please?� She said. On the third try, something clicked in her mind, and it worked. The disk pulsed bright light for a moment, then disappeared and Nathalie was pulled headfirst into the tunnel. She resisted the urge to scream as she went down and curled into a ball to roll out neatly when she hit the bottom. She stood up and tried to dust the sand off of her clothes, but it was a wasted effort because of how wet they were. The television show didn�t have everything perfect. The layout of the ship was different, but her mind seemed to know where to go and she moved almost mechanically down the hallway, her sodden sneakers leaving clear tracks in the sand that lightly dusted the floor. She tried to shrug out of the tight racing jacket, but it was stuck to her. She continued down the hall until it opened into a large central room. She could not see anyone around, but strangely, her mind told her that someone was there. �Hello?� She called. �Where are you?� The reply was not heard with her ears, but with her mind. /�Behind you.�/ |