The bald beauty is not among them.
A pang of remorse strikes me for no reason. She's nobody to me, yet I wish I hadn't hurt her. And I don't know why, but my urge to flee has subsided considerably. Go figure.
"Let's give him some room to breathe, my friends," Luther says.
The others back away, but a scrawny old man mutters, "We should tie 'im up."
"Try it, Grandpa, and I'll hang you with the rope." The words come out before I know what I'm saying.
My stomach drops. I don't want to see another coil of rope ever again.
"I'm sure you could, son," he replies, locking his grey eyes on me and standing confidently, albeit stoop-shouldered. How'd he ever make the cut for Sector 51? "You're fast enough, that's surely a fact."
"Rip, please," Luther says.
"I'm sure you could kill us all if you wanted to, and we'd be too slow to stop you. But is that what you want, son? Do you want to be a killer?"
I stare back at him.
"Use your gift for good," old Rip says. "That's why it's been given to you."
He lets those words sink in, then turns to join the others, their lights fading into the dark recesses of the cavern beyond. I'm left alone with Luther, Samson, Mr. Spit, and some pretty strange thoughts.
I have a gift, apparently: superspeed. I've used it three times now. These people have gifts, too: claws, night-vision, super-spit, probably others. But the word gift implies it was given by someone.
So...who exactly handed out these bizarre abilities?
"Where do they come from?" My voice is low and sounds a little defeated. I sniff and wipe at my oozing eyes, my bloody nose.
"The others?" Luther frowns, gesturing to the men and women who've left.
"No. The gifts." I mime claws with my fingers.
He almost smiles. "We believe... We have come to believe—"
"With Daiyna's help, of course," Plato adds. He looks so young with his bright eyes and hairless face. How old was he on D-Day? A newborn?
"Without Daiyna, we had only vague conjectures and fears. At first, we thought the same as you, that we were somehow mutating. Perhaps we left the bunker too soon and were suffering bizarre, unpredictable side effects. I was the first from our sector to be changed. I experienced it first in a dream, then in reality." Luther flexes his fingers, and the claws shoot out.
Samson chuckles. "Gets me every time."
Yeah. Real entertaining.
Luther turns his hand over, marveling at it, apparently still awed even after the time that's passed. "I've yet to grow accustomed to this." He shakes his head and allows the claws to retract. "Daiyna—the woman who found you—and her sisters also experienced newfound abilities emerging among them, all beneficial in some way to their survival. They could climb great heights with ease and see without any light. Some of them, like our Samson here, were gifted with super-human strength."
Samson grins, revealing a mouthful of big teeth. "I don't even have to work out anymore." He shrugs. "But I do anyhow. Gotta look like I'm making an effort. For the ladies."
"Any luck with that?" Plato asks.
The giant's expression darkens. "They'll come around eventually."
Luther clears his throat, and they both return their attention to me.
"But where do they come from? These weird abilities?" He better not say ghosts, or I'm out of here for good this time.
"At the same time that my brothers and I were struggling to comprehend what was happening to us, Daiyna and her sisters were doing the same, only they were blessed with a revelation that didn't come to us." He pauses. "Milton, when you were on your journey all those months, did you at times feel...as if you weren't alone?"
Is he kidding? All I felt was utterly and completely alone. I hoped there were other survivors out there somewhere, but the nagging fear always remained that I was the last man on the planet. Not sure yet whether I wish I was right.
"No." I think again. "Well, not until the whole attack of the killer sand thing."
"You felt a Presence?"
"Then? Yeah, definitely. One that wanted to kill me."
Luther presses his fingertips together. "It did."
It? He better not mean a ghost.
"When we found Daiyna and what remained of her group—after we proved we weren't their enemy, which took some doing—we learned a lot from them. None the least of which was that this life force, something we all felt at one time or another yet none could identify, is indeed real. And it can communicate."
"Okay." I nod to show I'm listening and hope he'll go on. "And?"
"Brace yourself," Samson rumbles.
"This Presence, from what we can tell, takes two forms: one that wishes us harm, and another, which has somehow granted us these super-human abilities. We don't know why this dichotomy exists, but we have reason to believe there are forces at work on this planet that desire vengeance upon humankind, while others seek to aid us in our survival. It may be that these are two facets of the same entity, or that there are two very distinct entities. From what Daiyna has been told, it appears to be the latter. There's so much we don't know, and even less that we understand." He leans toward me. "What we know for certain is that months ago, Daiyna saw you in a dream. And in this dream, she knew how to save your life. She was told to save you."
I swallow. "Told?"
"By the spirits of the earth."
That's it. I'm out of here. I'll thank them for their fine hospitality and be on my way. The tough guy approach didn't work, so I'll try being the nice guy.
"Well, good luck to you all." I start to my
