4.1
I sat for a few more minutes to catch my breath, turning over the image of Eve's tantrum in my mind. She'd tossed her gun to the ground when she ran off, so I picked the pistol out of the dirt as I stood up.
I wonder if she'll ever forgive me, I thought.
It was too bad. After all, I was thinking we might have been able to become friends.
I dropped our guns in the backpack and slung it over my shoulder before carefully retracing our path from the camp spot. I tried to think of some way I could make it up to her, but it wasn't the sort of thing I'd ever done before.
What am I even supposed to say, after something like that? I wondered. It seemed all too likely that she would never talk kindly to me again.
By the time I returned, it was getting late in the afternoon, and Blake, Nikki, and Corvus were all sitting around, chatting. Well, it didn't look like Corvus was doing any of the talking, but he was at least listening in. Eve, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found.
"Hey, Jelani!" Nikki beamed at me. "Where's your buddy, Eve?"
"I don't know," I replied. "I think I pissed her off, though."
"Aw, dang it. She probably won't be back for a little while, then. Why don't you join us over here!"
Nikki was certainly doing well.
I had no reason to refuse, so I sat down next to her. Corvus was directly across from me.
Nikki must have sensed what I was thinking because she exclaimed, "Wait, Jelani, have you never talked to Corvus?"
I shook my head. Actually, I had never even heard him speak.
"Well, don't be shy," she said, "introduce yourselves!"
It is what I'd wanted, I guess, but for some reason, I was starting to have second thoughts.
"Uhh, hey, I'm Jelani," I said with a nod. Maybe I should have shared something about myself, but I couldn't think of anything else to add.
His head hung heavily, and I never saw his eyes. "I'm Corvus," he said in a low, wispy voice that melted away with the wind.
The day grew a little darker.
"Yay!" Nikki exclaimed happily, bringing the sunshine back into the world. "Blake, why don't you tell Jelani about what we're doing tomorrow?"
I was immediately interested, as I'd been wondering what was going on ever since his weird behavior earlier that day. He'd seemed on edge, as if we were approaching something important.
"Sure," Blake, who was sitting cross-legged, replied. "We're nearing an area that used to be a town. There were also plenty of farms in the surrounding region, so I'm hoping we'll be able to find some elements there. Of course, that also means it's going to be a bit dangerous."
Throughout the time I'd spent with the group, we'd only had a few encounters with rogues. However, I assumed that when he said "A bit dangerous", he meant they would be practically flying at us left and right.
"Anyway," he continued, "it would be nice to secure an element or two tomorrow, so be on the lookout."
"Ok," I replied with a nod, "but why haven't we taken elements from the rogues that have attacked us already?"
"It would be a waste of time," he answered. "An issue arises when you take an element out of a living organism. If the element is too small, it won't be able to sustain itself and will essentially disintegrate. Also, the size of the element decreases as the organism's life is used. In other words, it isn't easy to find an element large enough to maintain its form without being integrated inside a living thing."
"So you need… young ones?" I interrupted. I wasn't too keen on the idea of slaughtering baby animals and searching through their remains.
"That would be easy, but it's really not the case. In reality, every rogue contains an element of different size or variety, and an accordingly different amount of power. Even if we find a newborn rogue, it could still have a tiny element, unable to sustain itself on its own."
He pushed his hair out of his eyes. "Long story short, we need to find the most powerful rogues possible because they are the ones with the largest elements. Every rogue that has attacked us recently was puny and couldn't put up any kind of a fight."
I thought I was starting to get the picture. "So we'll just attack animals until we find one that's hard to kill?"
Nikki interjected before Blake could answer. "Actually, they usually attack you!"
I smiled. "Oh yeah. That would make sense, but I'm a little surprised. It seems like you guys should have a bunch of elements–have you just not shown them to me?"
"Well, we have a few," Blake replied as he shifted uncomfortably on the ground. "It may have sounded easy when I described it, but getting your hands on an element is really more complicated than that. The stronger rogues can't be finished easily, so they often escape, and there are sometimes other rebels hanging around in areas like these. They can complicate things quite a bit."
He scratched his chin. "Sure, there are elements in plants too, but it would be quite a tedious search to find anything other than growth or healing. Besides, I've found that the odds of being able to tolerate any element apart from healing are pretty low, so even if we do find one, we usually don't take the risk of using it."
"But you've consumed some?" I asked. "How do you know when to take the risk?"
"Yeah, it is a big risk," he replied, nodding, not answering my question at all. "Death, at worst."
"I know." I squinted at him a little. "So you guys just randomly eat elements and hope you don't die?"
"Not exactly." He paused, thinking for a few moments before continuing in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
"As I've already told you, I worked as a researcher of the elements. At the time, huge amounts of time and money were poured into that research, and I got to conduct some interesting experiments. Details aside, we learned that certain traits have an impact on the elements someone is 'compatible' with. Even the state of mind you're in has a significant effect."
He sighed thoughtfully, reminiscing on a time long ago. "But that method is nowhere near foolproof as it's very difficult to assess a person's personality, physical traits, and mindset perfectly–let alone determine which elements they'll tolerate. However, there is a different, surefire way to determine compatibility, but it requires specific conditions that are hard to replicate out here."
I kept my eyes fixed on him expectantly, but he went silent. "You're gonna explain that, right?"
His expression was grim. "Essentially, we had a dilemma in the lab because making subjects consume elements was too risky. After having a number of people fail to tolerate them and end up with the side effects–yes, a few even died–we were forced to change our methods. One thing we'd learned from our initial experiments was that, when considering two elements of the same variety, it's easier to tolerate a smaller one. Of course, different varieties vary wildly in 'potency', as we called it, which basically means how difficult the element is to tolerate relative to its size."
The lines on his face showed his hesitation, and it wasn't without thought that he continued speaking. "What we really needed was for people to consume tiny amounts of elements, because we would then be able to conduct experiments with much lower risk. I already said that small elements can't be sustained outside of their 'host', but what if someone were to consume the element directly out of the host while it was still alive?
"Eck." Nikki stuck her tongue out and twisted her face up in an expression of deep disgust.
Blake continued. "By doing this, we could determine whether someone would tolerate a larger version of the same element. I'm sure Nikki would rather me not bring this up," he nodded in her direction, "but Eve actually used this method a few years ago."
I raised my eyebrows. Yikes.
Nikki groaned, "Ahhhhh, don't remind me of that…"
"One more question," I said. "It's about the Blackpool Incident."
The faintest traces of a smile once again appeared on Blake's lips.
I stared at him a little too intently. That smile was starting to piss me off.
"Apparently, the reason it was such a big deal was that a bunch of the subjects disappeared. In Hoodsdale, they left the story at that, but when I lived in Russon, there was something else to it. They said that the missing subjects were 'successful projects'–they'd gained extreme elemental powers. 'Elemental monsters,' was what people called them."
I examined Blake's face, but his expression remained completely unchanged. He didn't even blink.
I asked my final question. "What's the truth?"
Blake broke our eye contact and looked over my head, far off into the forest behind me.
"I don't know the full truth," he replied. "We had an accident, and the whole facility exploded. I was just trying to survive, so I wasn't worried about the subjects and where they went."
His answer was pathetically incomplete. "But were they monsters? The subjects?"
His smile widened, but his eyes looked a little sad. "I don't know if I would call them 'monsters,' but a few of them had powerful authorities."
With that, our conversation ended, and we each returned to our own respective activities. I saw Blake take a leatherback notebook out of one of the backpacks, mostly staring at it intently, but occasionally jotting something down. In fact, writing in that journal seemed to be his favorite pastime, based on how frequently I saw him doing it.
I frowned, wondering what was in there.