Page 196 of Seer Prophet

I may have said it aloud, or only in my mind.

However I said it, I repeated it, louder, until the words penetrated, impelling me to action.

I have to go. I have to get out of here. Now.

Somewhere in that, I moved.

I turned away from all of them.

I moved through the room soundlessly, aiming my feet for the nearest exit. I felt Jon’s light on me, that pain in him, coupled with a worry that was cloying now, that fought its way into panic. I felt Balidor on his way, nearly there.

I felt Yumi, Wreg, Neela, Ullysa––

I felt the male seer, Dalejem, with the green and violet eyes.

I felt Tarsi. Kali.

The one person I didn’t feel was Revik.

All of them––all of us––were forced together now, bottled up in thick walls and one-way windows. They couldn’t get away from me, any more than I could get away from them.

I kept walking anyway, looking for a way out.

I didn’t know where I was going. I still wasn’t sure it mattered.

I have a memory of standing on the deck in the cutting wind, but I don’t know if that was real or memory or something I simply wanted. I think it was real. I remember feeling the wind and air go through me. I remember looking at the ocean, listening to the pounding of the engines through the wake… but at some point, someone came towards me there, too.

I left before they could reach me, feeling their light as it approached.

I could tell I wasn’t acting right. I knew something was wrong with me.

I couldn’t sleep. They said I couldn’t sleep.

I needed to go somewhere to think.

I needed to go somewhere where I didn’t have to feel their lights, where I didn’t have to feel their emotions pounding at me like the engines below the surf. I could feel myself being hunted by all of them, all of them wanting to pull me back inside, back into a cell where I could bang my hands on the walls and no one would hear me anymore.

I don’t know how I ended up at the door I did.

I don’t remember deciding to go there.

I’m not even sure how I knew whose room it was.

I knocked on the outside panel anyway, hitting it with my fist until someone opened up, and when I saw the person standing there, I felt an irrational flush of relief.

“Allie!” Angeline stared at me in bewilderment, wearing fuzzy pajamas and a lime green T-shirt. The T-shirt had the symbol of a human band I vaguely remembered from San Francisco. “Allie, it’s the middle of the night. Are you okay?”

I don’t know if I said anything to her.

All I know is, at some point, I wasn’t standing in that green and gray hallway anymore. She pulled me inside, and shut the door behind me. For the first time since I’d seen Kali on that beach, things stopped spinning in the light and dark corners of my mind.

For the first time, everything went still.

Chapter36

Left Alone

Iheard them at the door.

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