Kaera moved immediately to Zac’s side, where she knelt, one hand in his, the other on his forehead. Sean watched her for a moment, but knew there was nothing he could do to help her. His abilities were far removed from hers; right now he was just her ride home. He noticed Taylor sitting besides the bed, staring at nothing in particular, and approached him.

“How are you taking all this?” Sean asked the young man gently.

“I’m not taking it at all,” he answered simply. “I’ve given up trying to make any sense out of anything that happened today.”

Sean pulled a chair over from the other side of the room and sat down next to Taylor. “Well, I promised you an explanation. Kaera’s going to be a while, so why don’t I tell you my story. It may help you make some sense of all of this.”

Sean checked the minds around him with his own. The rest of the family were either sleeping, or nearly so. He wove a curtain of silence around the room with his mind to keep anyone else in the suite from hearing what was going on in the room.

“Some of this I’ve never told anyone, and I guess when you hear it, you’ll probably understand why. I’m going to tell you because right now I don’t think it would be right to try to keep anything from you. Besides, I’ve asked you more times than I can count to trust me today, so now I’m going to trust you.

“First of all, everything I’ve told you in the past few days was absolutely true. I was born and raised on Long Island. I had a pretty normal childhood, and I really am studying to be an English teacher. But I did leave some things out.

“Six years ago I was kidnapped by, well, I guess the best word would be a cult. I was in my house. I’d just gotten back from school and was about to head out to work when three men came into my house. They beat me unconscious. I didn’t even have a chance to fight back. When I woke up, I was in a tiny stone room, chained to the wall. I still don’t know how long I was out, but I guess it was a while. The cell was completely dark. There were no windows at all, just a slot in the door where someone would shove food and water through every now and then. I couldn’t tell if it was night or day, and I had no way of knowing when one day ended and another one started.

“I later found out that that’s how the Salatern treat all their Initiates when they first arrive. A few weeks alone in the dark to help break their will before training begins. The Salatern, the cult that had taken me, worship Kerchek, an old god, probably older than any god Humans ever dreamed up. They believe Kerchek thirsts for blood and pain all the time, and it’s their duty to provide him with as much of what he craves as they can. They make warfare and murder an art form. They’re the most feared assassins and mercenaries the universe has ever seen. They kill and torture for money, but the truth is, they’d kill and torture for free too. Their god demands suffering, and after countless centuries, they’ve mastered everything that entails. They keep their culture going by kidnapping people they think will make good, loyal killers. They take them to their home world, and train them. The Salatern are not human. They’re not really any one race now, really, but a mix of almost every race from every populated planet in the universe really. I was just one of their victims.

“I was to be trained as a priest of Kerchek. Of course, for the Salatern, training first means brainwashing. You break the mind and spirit first, so the student learns to fear and love only Kerchek, learns to live and die for the Salatern. Then you train them to kill, to maim, to torture, all in Kerchek’s name. So, when that door finally opened, I was dragged from my cell and so began my brainwashing.”

“What did they do?” Taylor looked up at Sean. This was all like something out of a fantasy novel, but Sean’s voice was so compelling so filled with pent up emotions, that Taylor couldn’t resist the story.

“They tortured me.” Sean answered simply. “The Salatern pride themselves on their ability to keep a person in constant, agonizing pain indefinitely. One carefully tends to helping one part of a victim’s body heal as another slowly peels the flesh off of another part.” Sean’s voice was distant as he made that horrific statement, as if he was reading it from a paper. “They seemed to like to do that to me. They would let my arms heal while working on my legs, ever so slowly. When my arms were whole again, they would bandage my legs and work on my arms again. In between, they’d work on my head and face, my back, my chest&ldots; whatever struck their fancy, really. They did that for a few months, while throwing in other kinds of torture in now and then, especially if they were training new torturers in some technique or another.”

Taylor shuddered involuntarily. Sean was talking about all of this like he was describing some movie, but there was still a note in his voice that told Taylor there was something behind all of this. Sean was distancing himself from the story because, but there was a tremble in his voice now and then that spoke volumes. Sean was close to breaking down as he recounted his story; that much was obvious.

“Well, anyway, after a few months, they stopped. At that point, they knew I would do anything&ldots; literally anything&ldots; to get off of that table and out of that room. So, they made me take an oath to Kerchek, and they started the next part of my education. Things were easier then, in some ways, but in a culture that thrives on suffering, you’re always in some kind of pain. They taught me I had what they called the Gift. It’s what we’d probably call magic here, but that word really doesn’t do it justice. Basically, the Gift is the ability to manipulate energy fields through brain waves. It sounds mystical and arcane, but it’s really just physics and biology. Our bodies produce all kinds of electromagnetic fields and radiation. Some of us are able to control those fields and waves and use them to interact with other types of energy.”

“What I did before to get us here was pretty complex, but a lot of what I can do is very basic. For instance:” Sean picked up the remote control from the nightstand next to him and held it in the air between them. Then he dropped it from his hand, but the remote stayed where it was, suspended between him and Taylor with apparently nothing holding it up. Taylor looked at Sean skeptically. This was really starting to sound like some con artist’s scheme. The remote control trick was a cheesy magician’s trick rip-off. He didn’t know how Sean was managing it, but he knew better than to buy into this “magic” crap.

“Take it.” Sean said simply, nodding towards the remote. “No strings or anything.”

“Uh huh.” Taylor said, reaching for the remote. Oddly, when he grabbed it, he took it easily, but it didn’t seem to weigh anything. He could feel the plastic in his hand, and he ran his hands around it. No wires. Taylor opened his hand and lowered it away from the remote. The device stayed where it was rather than follow Taylor’s descending palm. Taylor was baffled now. He stared at the remote, trying to figure out what Sean had done to it, when he noticed his surroundings had changed slightly. Looking around him suddenly, Taylor realized he was no longer sitting in the chair. He was about two feet above it, and so was Sean. The two of them, still in their seated positions, were hovering in the middle of the room. The color drained from Taylor’s face as the two of them sank gently back into their chairs.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, Taylor, but I realize all of this is hard to swallow. That’s usually the fastest way to at least keep someone’s mind open. If there were wires holding you up, you’d have felt them. But there weren’t any wires. Instead, I interrupted the Earth’s gravitational field around us so it didn’t pull us down any more. Then I pushed up on us. I guess it doesn’t make much sense, but it really does just come down to biology and physics.”

Taylor just nodded, not sure what to say. Half of him was almost ready to buy Sean’s story. The other half was sure this was some elaborate joke, and he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by letting on that he thought it might be real.

“Well, anyway, like I said, they were training me to use my Gift. The training centered on combat. Protecting troops, getting through other mages’ defenses, how to kill as many people with my mind as possible. That was to be my place in the Salatern, a Battle Mage. Other trainees, I found out, were trained to use their Gift to manipulate others’ minds. Some were trained to use it for torture. To wring out a confession or information without laying a hand on the person. Everyone had a place in society, and I was to be a Battle Mage. They had literally the rest of my life planned out for me, but they’d made a mistake somewhere.

“I was going along with them because no matter how bad things got during training, no matter how bad the beatings were if I made a mistake during a lesson, it was nothing compared to what I’d gone through those first few months. The fear of going back there kept me quiet, and willing to go through whatever they asked of me. They thought I was a convert, but really, I was just too afraid to think of anything but obedience. Their mages would tear into my mind now and then, looking for signs of rebellion, but they never found any. They tasted my fear for Kerchek, and took it for worship, but I really didn’t believe in him. I was just afraid of what he stood for. I found out later that Humans are almost unique among the sentient species in that they have a hemispherical brain. Almost every other sentient race has either a monospherical brain, or a trispherical brain. My guess is, this fundamental difference in the architecture of my mind made it hard for them to get a clear picture of what was going on in my head. But for whatever reason, they mistook my pain and fear for loyalty.

“Then, one day, I was working on a very complicated spell. Basically, it was designed to wipe out entire legions of enemies while leaving our own troops unharmed. It was difficult to manage. I always had a hard time with things like that. I didn’t want to kill, and I didn’t want to know how to kill. But my Master was relentless. Every failed attempt at structuring the pattern of the energies with my mind resulted in some kind of attack from him. Finally, after a few hours of being abused by him, I lashed out. I crystallized the energy forms in my head, but a thousand times larger than he’d shown me, and I struck out. It didn’t really do anything. There was no one around that fit the spell’s definition of “enemy” so there was no visible effect, but my Master could still see what I had done. Like I said, it was a complex task, and when my Master demonstrated it, it took him several minutes to prepare it before he could unleash it. I created the pattern from nothing in an instant, and put more power into it than he could have if he’d spent a week trying. And when I looked into his eyes, I saw something there I never thought I’d see from any Salatern. Fear. He was afraid of me. Without breaking a sweat, I had pushed enough power through that spell to fry his mind.

“As the days passed, I saw that look in more than one mage’s eye, and I began to think that maybe things weren’t as hopeless as I had once thought. After all, they were afraid of me for a reason, and when it came down to it, there wasn’t anyone on that planet who could hope to stop me if I tried to leave. But for the time being, I stayed where I was. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt like I was waiting for something&ldots; something big.

“One night, I woke up and found my room, the whole building I was in, actually, shaking. I reached out and down with my mind, expecting to sense an earthquake. I was wrong. It turned out to be volcanic activity. I hadn’t realized it before, but the city I was in was built on the side of a volcano. As I probed around, I felt the minds of other mages, thousands of them, all straining to hold back the impending eruption. Every mage in the city, and in every city nearby, was fighting with the volcano, and that’s when I realized what I had been waiting for. I gathered all the energy I could hold to me and wrapped myself in shields of energy. I reached out and pushed down, through the minds of the countless mages fighting against me, and into the heart of the volcano. Then I pulled. The magma came pouring up, pushing its way through the side of the volcano, through the crust of the planet itself.

“The eruption sent lava up for miles, and I just kept pulling. The other mages were attacking me with everything they had, but they really didn’t have a chance. They had more skill than I did, but they couldn’t come close to the sheer power that was flowing through me. By the time it was all over, there was no one left alive in the city, or for miles around it. I was buried in solid rock, but my power kept me safe from the heat and weight. It all happened in less than a half an hour. I didn’t even really get a chance to think about what I was doing, it all happened so fast after I woke up. I was free though, and right then, that was all I really cared about. That room&ldots; That room that terrified me for so long was gone: disintegrated. So was everyone who had hurt me.

“After that, I wandered around for a while. The Salatern weren’t gone completely. I’d only destroyed the one city, and they were looking for me. At first, I was so angry I killed any Salatern I came across. It was always self-defense. They were all ordered to kill me on sight, so I didn’t really think I had much of a choice, but the truth is I was almost enjoying it. I was still striking back, getting revenge for what they’d done to me. But, after a while, I realized that I was becoming exactly the kind of person they wanted me to be. The more I traveled the more I realized just how powerful I was, and the more I enjoyed running into the occasional Battle Mage.

“A lot happened to me after I escaped, but I finally learned that wiping the Salatern out wasn’t going to help me. I wasn’t going to heal the scars that hurt the most. Eventually I made it back here, to Earth. I’ve sort of staked it out as a safe area. The Salatern know better than to come looking for new recruits here, and other most other aggressive races avoid it too. As a result, Earth, and more accurately, America, has become a sort of safe haven for some civilizations. Kaera’s people were actually here before any of this happened to me. They were chased off their home world, Leissara, by another race and have pretty much blended into society. They keep to themselves mostly, but a few years ago, the Err’neth found where they were hiding. The Err’neth are a savage race. They pick and choose civilizations to conquer, and once they start, they won’t stop until there’s nothing left. Since they found them they’ve been trying to invade Earth quietly, but the Leissar have managed to keep them back. Since I returned, I’ve helped out too. The problem is there are billions of Err’neth, so they can keep throwing soldiers at us. The two men I chased out of the coffee shop before were new arrivals from the Err’neth army.”

“If there are so many of them, why don’t the just send a huge army?” Taylor asked. He still wasn’t allowing himself to think too much about what Sean was telling him, but somehow he couldn’t help but believe. He’d seen too many impossible things today and his grip on what was real was probably starting to slip.

“They’re afraid of the US military, actually. Since humans with the Gift are so rare, we’ve relied on technology, and we’re one of the most technologically advanced societies they’ve come across. In hand to hand combat, they’d decimate us, but nowadays, we don’t do hand to hand combat. A dozen mages could wreak havoc on our troops, and if we sent a few missiles at them at a time, they could easily take care of them too, but if we launched a full scale modern attack on them, there would be nothing they could do to stop them. A blast from a decent sized bomb could be shielded by a mage, but he’d be weakened. A few more bombs, and no more mage. The big thing, though, is our nuclear weapons. If it came down to it, it wouldn’t be too hard for me to open a gate to their planet and drop a few nuclear warheads on them. They know that, so they’re playing by my rules.”

“Your rules?” Taylor was puzzled.

“I don’t want the general population finding out about any of this. As long as they keep the fighting between the Err’neth and the Leissar, I keep away from their planet,” Sean replied. “You have to understand, I’ve seen what this kind of sudden revelation can do to a civilization. Suddenly everything everyone believes becomes shattered. People panic, they don’t understand what magic is all about. If I were to reveal my powers to the American people, some would call me the second coming of Christ, some would call me the Anti-Christ, and most would panic about what I was going to do with my power. That’s just the people who would believe any of it. There’d be a split between the people who refused to let go of what they’ve known their whole lives, and the people who were willing to accept the larger truth. Entire planets have fallen into anarchy over things like this.”

“Isn’t that kind of extreme?” Taylor asked.

“Is it?” Sean asked in return. “Right now you’re probably still not really convinced that any of this is real. People don’t like to find their whole world turned upside down. Our entire concept of reality is based on the idea of magic not being real, and even though everything I do has a scientific explanation, the damage to our world would already be done before I’d get a chance to get people to listen to it. Imagine if everyone on the planet were going through the same thing you’re going through right now.”

Taylor sat silently for a few minutes. This was a lot to take in, but he still felt compelled to consider that Sean may actually be telling the truth. He wasn’t too sure he agreed with Sean’s melodramatic predictions, but as far as the rest, he’d been through too much to have a closed mind.

Sean gave Taylor some time to think before adding. “It’s important to me that you believe what I’m telling you Taylor. You probably think I’m completely insane, but if I can prove to you that what I’m saying is true, then I want to do whatever it takes.”

Taylor considered the day’s events carefully. He couldn’t come up with a better explanation, and instead found himself stuck between his trust in Sean and his disbelief. “What’s she doing to Zac?” Taylor asked finally, nodding towards Kaera.

“Well, I don’t know the details, but she’s healing him. Kaera has a Gift too, but not like mine. She’s a Healer. She can speed up natural healing, and show the body how to correct problems. Right now she’s probably changing Zac’s DNA to get rid of whatever mutation is causing his condition. Then she’ll help his body repair the nerve cells that he’s already lost.”

Taylor shook his head skeptically. “Nerve cells don’t regenerate. Once they die, that’s it.”

“Not if Kaera has anything to say about it.” Sean spoke confidently. “A part of what a Healer does is temporarily change how a body heals itself. They can speed up the healing process, or slow it down. They can make a body grow back limbs and organs, and have it repair damaged or defective ones.”

On a sudden impulse, Sean reached over and took Taylor’s hand in his own. “Taylor, the last thing I would ever do is come here and tell you brother’s going to be okay if I weren’t absolutely sure about it. I know what you’ve gone through today. Seeing your brother like this, and finding out what’s wrong with him must be torture. For me to come here and give you false hope would just be heaping on more pain. I would never, ever do anything to hurt you.”

Taylor looked into Sean’s eyes; every logical fiber in his body was screaming at him that this was all impossible. Sean’s story couldn’t be true. Another part of him, though, a part of him that had nothing to do with logic, couldn’t help but see the concern in Sean’s eyes, and hear the sincerity in his voice.

“I believe you,” Taylor whispered. “I know I shouldn’t, but I believe you.”

Sean released Taylor’s hand just as the door opened. Walker stood in the doorway, his eyes on Kaera.

“What’s going on here?” He asked as his gaze shifted to Sean suspiciously.

“Dad,” Taylor stood up. “This is Kaera. She’s a friend of Sean’s. She’s helping Zac.”

“Taylor, I know how hard all of this must be on you, and I don’t know what these people told you, but there’s nothing anyone can do to help your brother.” Walked gave Sean a stony look. “I don’t know how you got in here, but I think you and your friend should leave. Now.”

Sean stepped between Kaera and Walker. He could feel Kaera pulling her power back from Zac, finishing up. “I know what the doctors told you, Mr. Hanson, but there are a lot of things even the experts don’t know. Kaera’s almost done, and when she is, we’ll go.”

Kaera stood up from where she was kneeling behind Sean, unaware of what had happened while she was in a Healing trance. She placed her hand on Sean’s shoulder and spoke simply. “It’s done. We should go.”

Walker stepped aside to let the two out of the room, then followed them closely.

“Can I call you tomorrow, Sean?” Taylor asked. There was still so much he wanted to ask Sean and Kaera. He needed to explore all of this so much more.

“You won’t be calling him any more, Tay” Walker said firmly. “He’s a con artist.”

Taylor opened his mouth to protest, but Sean interrupted him. “Let it go Taylor. Your brother’s okay. That’s all that matters. Just please think about what I told you. I hope you’ll do the right thing.”

Just before Sean and Kaera slipped through the front door, Kaera turned and spoke to Walker. “I realize you have no reason to think I can help your son,” she said, “but before you let the doctors do anything to him, please have him tested again. If he’s only going to get worse, he’ll be taking tests all the time anyway. If they find an improvement in his fine motor skills, and I’m sure they will, have them do another blood test. If his genes contain the same flaw they did a few hours ago, you’re no worse off, but if they’ve changed, you’ll save him quite a bit of suffering.” Having spoken her mind, she turned into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind her.

“Thank you, Kaera.” Sean hugged her tight as he prepared the gate back to Kaera’s home.

“I only did it because my mother ordered me to. I still think this was a big mistake. How do we know we can trust them? They had medical records of his condition, and when they realize his DNA’s been repaired, they’ll know I did something. If they go public with it, how am I supposed to explain that?” Kaera demanded.

“You won’t have to. They won’t tell anyone about this,” Sean assured her.

“How can you be so sure?”

Sean shrugged. “I don’t know how I know. I just do.” With that, Sean opened the gate and the two disappeared from the Plaza.