Realmer (Chapter 2)

When people walk away from a fight in movies, they walk slowly and sure-footed as everything explodes behind them. But as I walk through the mall, everything all blurred and lukewarm, I can tell my steps are too fast, too clumsy. I don’t whisper ‘sorry’ like I usually do when I bump shoulders with people. The big, color-coded map of the mall burns in my vision. The icy drafts drifting in the air grip frozen fingers around my neck and ankles.

I put my hand to my forehead, dizzy from using so much of my power at once. I’ve never encrypted anyone before, and I feel my power re-filling me, replenishing me, like blood rushing back into a limb that has fallen asleep. But in this moment, I welcome the numbness. I wish it would crowd out the guilt.

I’ve heard stories of so-called heroes who have encrypted hundreds in a day. Heroes who find their pride in taking another’s freedom. It’s always deemed a tragedy when they are found to be encrypted themselves.

I should be proud.

You know you had to. The voice in my head doesn’t sound like my own.

I can’t shake the image of the woman as the chair hit her in the back of the head, her eyes rolling back into her skull, knocked out. Not dead. I didn’t hit her that hard. I hope.

My stomach begs to throw up.

But, she was the one who followed me. She realized I was a Realmer and had wanted to encrypt me. I knew we couldn’t let Norms see the fight, so I ran to the back room of the darkest store I could find. If I had just switched realms she would have followed me.

I try to slow my pace, but my feet trip over themselves. A girl a little older than me sprints toward the store I just left. She has a tattoo curling around her right ankle. It’s like a dare.

I look around as I make my way to the front exit, wondering how many of these people are like me, blending in with the crowd.

“Roughly one in twelve people are Realmers,” my father told me once. Much more rare to actually figure out who they are, though.

I clutch my jacket as I leave the mall, and the crunch of dead leaves startles me; my nerves are still singing at a high pitch. I keep my eyes wide open, ignoring the cold sting of the air. Every time I blink I see her unseeing eyes.

The next few blocks calm me, windows with bright lights and laughing customers line both sides of the street. The air smells of greasy food.

I slide my phone from my pocket and check my messages out of habit. Nothing. My thumb hovers over the messages with my mother. I want to call her, to tell her that I’m okay, that I made it through a fight she will never be allowed to know about.

The door is unlocked and warmth envelops my senses as soon as I enter the house. Yellow light glows from dusty light bulbs, and the heat from the vents seeps in through my clothes. Quiet conversation floats from the kitchen, and the oven has made the air stuffy.

I drop my bag by the stairs and slip into the kitchen. “Hey, George,” I say, falling into a chair at the table. He smiles at me from behind the island, wiping his hands on his flour-covered apron.

“Hey, sweetheart!” he says. I look up and smile back at him, not yet wanting to tell him that I encrypted someone, especially with a guest here. I can’t see his whole face, only the side that is smiling at George. His hair, so blond as to be striking and bright, catches my eye.

“Where’s Molly?” I ask.

“Not quite sure,” he says. “I’m sure she’ll be getting along soon.” The lines wrinkle around his smile, but I see a heaviness in his eyes, the same paranoia I’m feeling.

I bite the corner of my lip, pushing away the thought of Molly getting encrypted. A Realmer’s vote is, in a way, installed into their body. But their vote can be stolen by force. Knock a Realmer out, and trace their ankle while using Realmer power to change their vote, and they’re stuck with a vote that’s not theirs. No way to switch back.

“Avery,” George says. “This is Trace.” Trace hops up from the barstool and walks over to me. Holds out his hand.

“Trace Lutz,” he says. I slip my hand in his and we shake.

“Avery Jamison,” I say, “Third Realmer.”

“A what?” he asks, knitting his eyebrows together. My heart abandons a few beats. I had just assumed that he was...

“I-I,” I say, “it’s a club at my school, and I thought-“

Trace starts to laugh. “Fifth Realmer,” he says, slightly nodding to himself, and I breathe 

out a sigh of relief. George chuckles from his place behind the island.

But then his words sink in.

“A Fifth Realmer?” I ask, looking at George instead of Trace. Fifth Realmers are pretty rare, and most of the younger ones spend their time in the Fifth Realm, practicing their Fifth Realm power, or shadowing the leaders of the Realmer government.

George nods, and Trace laughs under his breath. I look up and see a tiny smirk on his face, I’m not sure it’s even there. We are in the First Realm, so I try to work my way into his thoughts.

Nice try, Sweetheart. I’m on lockdown.

Fifth Realmers have a reputation for being arrogant. One corner of his mouth fails more than the other to suppress a smile, an attractive look on him.

“Thanks,” he says.

“What?”

“I have the full mind power.”

Oh.

I try to clear my mind, though it’s more difficult to block out someone with the full mind power. It’s something I’ve always been jealous of, having all three stages of mind manipulation. They can know thoughts, use the power of suggestion, or completely control another’s mind.

I give him a sugary-sweet smile as I seal my mind against his power. His eyes twinkle with amusement. “Not bad.”

His power is strong, a battering ram against my mind. “Not bad yourself.”

I hear the sound of a flag whipping in the wind, the sound of someone switching Realms. Molly appears next to me.

“Hey y’all,” she says, a little breathless. Molly lives in Pennsylvania with George, but she’s a southern belle stuck in snow. She’s a little heavy-set and has a few wrinkles on her rosy cheeks, but I can’t remember a time I knew her without them.

“What happened?” George asks, placing a large casserole dish on the table. Now that the panic has subsided, I’m starving.

Trace drops into the chair next to mine and George pulls one out for Molly on the other side of the table.

“Jenny got encrypted.” Her voice sounds defeated. Jenny is one of her closest friends, a Traveler. “I went to visit her in the Second Realm after running some errands.” She pulls her purse off her shoulder and wraps the straps around the back post of her chair.

“When I got there, she was on the couch, I assumed asleep. But when I went over to wake her, she wouldn’t want me to let her sleep if I was there, it took a lot to wake her up. When I did, she was shaking. She said she was alright but I should leave, someone had broken in and encrypted her. We saw shadows moving around in her kitchen right before we switched Realms.”

“Is she safe now?” George asks, sitting down next to her.

Molly nods. “She’ll be staying with someone else tonight. That man that encrypted her was probably waiting for more family, but it’s just her husband, and he’s on a business trip.”

“Well,” George says, shifting in his seat, “let’s eat, then.”

“This Census is starting to make me nervous,” Molly says. “The Fifth Realmers have been doing a fine job in the government.”

“Well, the family thing has been the biggest platform for Travelers, right? Restricting travel would end up splitting different-realm family members,” I say. “I haven’t read any news that can come up against that.”

“Jim from work talked to me about a new ‘Kinship of Realmers’ argument today at work,” George says. “The Restrictors are really taking this to a new level. It was like he was taught a certain way to explain it. I can almost imagine how so many people have bought into it.”

“Shame,” Molly says. “I’ve got hope, though. As the Census gets closer, I’ll bet a bunch of Restrictors will sit down and think about shutting down Realm travel and only seeing their family once a year.”

“Let’s hope,” George says. “Jim was spewing all sorts of pro-Kinship rhetoric like ‘we are all one big family as Realmers.’ He said that First Realmer babies would be assigned to First Realm foster families and continue in foster families as they move up Realms.”

“That’s not nurturing enough, prizing power over family. We’ll have delinquents on our hands if they aren’t taken care of properly. Powerful delinquents. This will be a full-on war before we know it.” Molly shakes her head and takes what she calls a “cleansing breath.”

We eat in relative silence after that, only making small talk in between bites. I let my mind wander. It’s not legal to encrypt someone, and I wonder if Realmers ever actually call the police when they get encrypted. Not Norm police, obviously, but Realmer police. Technically, something was stolen. A vote. Then again, law enforcement is usually too busy encrypting people themselves.

“Trace, child, are you never full?” Molly asks with a chuckle. Trace just smiles. I finished ten minutes ago. Trace is still going strong.

“Trace will be staying with us for a little while,” Molly says, directing her eyes to me. “He’ll be staying in that extra guest room, I hope that’s okay, I know you sometimes use the desk in there for homework.”

“My parents had to go back to finish up stuff with our old house in Michigan,” Trace says, taking a loud gulp. “But I needed to enroll in school as soon as possible.”

“Oh, it’s no problem,” I say. My mind won’t stop replaying the woman from the mall, dropping to the floor over and over again. She’s probably fine by now, at least I hope so. I just can’t get the image of her heavy-lidded, unblinking eyes out of my mind.

“Avery, are you okay?” George asks. “You look pale.”

“Do I?” I press my hands to my cheeks- freezing fingers against flaming skin.

“Is something wrong?” Molly asks.

I pause. “I encrypted someone today.”

“Oh?” Molly asks. The clock in the kitchen ticks audibly, and now I picture myself stealing her vote. The fingers I slid around her ankle suddenly feel dirty.

“Yeah, at the mall.” My voice sounds empty.

George gets up and rests a hand on my shoulder on his way to the kitchen. “It would have been them or you.”

“I guess so,” I say. Molly slips me a sympathetic look.

“Who wants dessert?” George asks, parading over to the table with pie covered in whipped cream.

I’m about to excuse myself when I hear my voice saying “I do,” in chorus with Trace and Molly.

I look over at Trace and glare. I catch him just in time to see his face turning away from me. He’s smiling down at the table cloth. He made me say that using mind control. My guard must have slipped.

“C’mon,” he whispers, leaning in his chair so that Molly doesn’t hear him. “You seem like you could use it.”

I open my mouth to protest, then stop. “Thank you.”