Chapter 1: https://markcheverton.com/the-algae-voices-of-azule-chapter-1/ 

Chapter 2: https://markcheverton.com/the-algae-voices-of-azule-chapter-2/

Chapter 3: https://markcheverton.com/the-algae-voices-of-azule-chapter-3/

The Algae Voices of Azule

Chapter 4

Inside the hospital, they found a waiting room filled with people, none of which they knew. The smell of the place was the opposite of their home; this placed smelled of nothing other than cleaners, antiseptic bug cleaning chemicals that seemed to coat their tongues as they breathed. Billy hated this smell. He scrunched his nose, hoping to force the aroma out, but to no avail. Ignoring the smells, they walked through the waiting room, inspecting all the faces.

Their parents were not here.

“Can I help you kids?” asked the lady behind the counter—someone in a nursing uniform. Billy noticed she had pretty, bright eyes, green like the algae on the oceans.

“We’re looking for our brother, Francis Asonti,” Billy said quickly. “He came in sometime today, I don’t know when.”

“Hold on, let me check,” the nurse said. She turned to her computer. A virtual display came to life in front of her, a glowing keyboard floating in the air. With practiced efficiency, she typed in the name and watched the information flow across the holographic screen. “I have a Frank Asonti, is that him?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s him,” Ali replied, excited. “Where is he? We need to see him, see if he’s OK.”

“Well, let me see where he is,” the nurse said, smiling as she pushed more buttons. Her smile suddenly faded, her bright eyes turned dark and sad. She was about to say something, then stopped and considered her words, then spoke. “He’s in the back of the hospital, in…um…long-term care, back down that hallway; all the way to the end…I’m really sorry.”

“What?” Billy asked.

“Come on,” Ali snapped and pulled her brother by the hand.

The twins bolted down the hallway, dodging doctors with vid scrolls and nurses with trays of medicines. The hospital was a maze of corridors and halls, each leading to a different part. Fortunately, there were holographic signs indicating which way to go, red for emergency, white for pharmacy, green for pediatrics, yellow for inpatient, blue for maternity, and black for long-term care. Billy and Ali followed the black floating stripe. It led through the bustling emergency room, past the maternity ward with incubators filled with newborns, each plastic enclosure with a government registration number glowing bright on the side—the government tracked everything—and finally into a lonely, dark section. It was like a totally different part of the hospital. The walls here were not as clean or freshly painted as in the rest of the hospital. It also lacked the oppressively clean antiseptic smell, as if the cleaning crew didn’t want to linger too long or were afraid to come back here. This was like a forgotten part of the hospital set aside for the forgotten patients.

Billy saw a desk at the end of the hallway guarding two double doors that barred their progress. He ran to the desk and looked for the nurse. The desk was taller than most, only his head able to peek over. A sheet of plas-steel surrounded the desk, the transparent barrier keeping the populace separated from the staff. It did not make Billy feel very welcome.

He knocked on the plas-steel divider.

“Yeah, yeah, coming,” grumbled an aged voice. An old woman in a wrinkled and stained nursing uniform came out from a back room and looked down at the boy and girl. “What do you two want?”

“We’re here to see our brother, Frank Asonti,” Ali explained quickly. “Is he here?”

“Hold on,” the nurse said as she slowly sat down in front of a computer, the holographic screen barely glowing. As she switched it on, a bluish-green glow seemed to light her face and stained uniform as the holographic screen formed in front of her. She was waving her hands in front of the virtual display, fingers pressing glowing buttons of light in midair. She scrolled through pages of information, patient registration data, names, address… until she pulled up the information she needed. Her manner betrayed her lack of empathy, clearly not in any hurry nor cared what her lack of haste did to those in front of her. “Aaa, yeah, he’s here.”

The twins waited.

“Well,…where is he?” Billy demanded.

“He’s back in room 12, but it looks like the doctors are back there talking with, I guess, your parents. You’ll have to wait.”

She switched off the computer and proceeded to clean her fingernails with a paper clip.

“Wait? We can’t wait,” Ali barked. “We have to see him.” She insisted.

“You’ll see him when the doctor says it’s OK,” the nurse said, no compassion in her voice. “Until then, you’ll have to wait.” She pointed to the waiting room nearby.

Billy sighed and looked at his sister.

“Come on,” he said as he walked to the waiting room and chose a seat, his sister following.

They leaned close to each other so that they could talk without being heard.

“What do you want to do?” Billy asked.

“I wanna listen,” Ali said, “you know, with our Gifts.”

“What about the Inquisitor?”

“This is the last place that the Inquisitor will be looking for us. I’m sure it’s safe. Come on.”

Billy closed his eyes and concentrated on his Gift. Gathering his psychic power, he focused his mind on those behind the double doors, carefully probing for their mother. Opening one eye, he could see that Ali was doing the same.

“I got her,” Billy said softly. “Follow my Gift.”

Ali focused her Gift on Billy. He could feel her concentration meshing with his, her Gift following his until it reached their target; their mother. Extending their Gifts, they listened.

“Tell me what happened,” the doctor asked.

“I told the last three doctors, why do I have to go through this again?” their father said, frustration in his voice.

“Please tell me what happened,” the doctor repeated with a lack of emotion.

“Fine. Like I told the others, my son and I are algaemen. We were out in the fields today pulling in a lot of green.”

“Green?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah, green algae,” Charles said. “You can’t just take any algae, the only one we can eat is the green. Anyway, we were collecting the green when a large patch of blue drifted into the field. You can’t eat the blue ones; in fact you can’t even touch them. It’s been known to drown men that fall overboard, or worse, give them the Voices.” He paused and took a drink of water from a paper cup that sat next to him. Billy could feel their mother hanging onto his arm; she was terrified. Charles put the cup down and continued. “We saw the Blue coming in, so we deployed the nets, to try to keep it out, but we weren’t fast enough and it got past the nets. My son, Frank, grabbed a long sweeper and tried to push the Blue back behind the net, but he leaned out too far over the edge of the harvester and fell in.” He paused, the painful memory made him feel choked up. Billy and Ali had never seen their father show any kind of emotion before. This was serious.

“What happened next?” the doctor asked, now taking notes. “What did the algae do?”

“You doctors seem awfully interested in the algae and not my son!” Charles snapped. “Why is that?”

“Please continue,” he said in a monotone voice, like an emotionless bot.

“Fine. So he fell in and right away the blue algae moved toward him like it was moving on its own power instead of just being driven by the current. It surrounded him then pressed in closer and closer. The stuff then covered his arms, moved in closer, then covered his shoulders and finally covered his head.”

Billy could hear their mother now sobbing; he could feel that she’d lost all hope.

“So I dove in after him,” Charles continued, putting an arm around his wife and holding her tight. “I grabbed the sweeper that Frank had used and pushed away the algae, but the Blue came toward me. A small piece touched my hand. I felt a strange feeling on my hand, like a little electrical shock then the blue algae moved away from me. I swam toward my son, and pushed away more of the algae with the sweeper until I could get my hands on him. Then, I dropped the sweeper and pulled him to my side. Once I had him, all the blue algae moved away from us, as if it didn’t want to touch me for some reason. Well, I took advantage of that, and pulled him away from the algae and back toward the harvester. By then, my shipmates had a boat in the water and pulled us in. We pulled him on deck but he was already like this,” Charles pointed to Francis, lying on the hospital bed. His eyes were wide open, darting around to the left and right, unaware of anyone or anything in the room. He was completely disconnected from reality, a waking vegetable.

“We could tell that the Blue had given him the Voices just by the look on his face, and especially his eyes. We stripped him naked and looked for any blue algae left, but he was clean. I had the captain of the harvester turn around and head for shore. It’ll probably cost me my share, having them end the trip early, but I didn’t care. And here we are.” Charles paused to take another drink of water then continued. “Now, what are you going to do to help my son?”

The doctor continued to make notes on his vid-scroll, the light pen scribbling furiously, the scroll’s software converting the scribbling into words. Billy could see through his father’s eyes the words; algae moved toward subject, self-locomotion, sentient? …The doctor then deactivated the vid-scroll and rolled it up.

“Someone will be in to help you set up care for your son. There’s nothing we can do for him,” the doctor said with a total lack of emotion. “He’ll have to stay under our care, until the Voices go away and he’s no longer contagious.”

“How long does that take?” Diane asked, forcing back the tears, looking for hope.

“We haven’t seen that happen, yet.” the doctor stated. “Some patients who have only a brief encounter with the blue algae will be conscious for a while and complain of voices in their head, but eventually the Voices overpower their minds and they become comatose, like your son, and then die a few weeks later.”

Diane took a step toward her son and reached out to him.

“You can’t touch him. He still has the blue algae spores in him. The Voices are very, very contagious. If you touch him, you’ll end up just like him.” the doctor warned, again without emotion. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do.”

At that, the doctor turned and left, making no attempt to comfort the parents whose lives he’d just destroyed with his news.

Diane crumbled to her knees and cried uncontrollably, their father kneeling next to her and holding her tight. Billy and Ali were surprised that he too was crying, and suddenly it seemed wrong to be intruding on this scene with their Gifts. They released their psychic power and brought their minds back to the here and now, to the waiting room. The twins looked at each other, and they too cried; their brother was lost in a coma and was going to die. This was terrible, no beyond terrible, it was unthinkable; how could this be happening? Billy and Ali sat there, hugging each other and cried for who knows how long. Finally, they stopped crying and just waited in silence for their parents, not wanting to see the looks on their faces, the look of despair, of defeat. After what seemed like a lifetime of silence, the two double doors opened and their parents came out, their father’s arm around their mother.

“What are you kids doing here?” their father snapped.

“We were worried about Francis,” Billy said, a little defiance in his voice.

“It’s Frank!” Charles barked.

“Fine…Frank, we were worried about Frank.”

“I told you kids to stay at home,” Charles said angrily.

Billy and Ali ignored him and ran to their parents, hugging them around the waist as tightly as they could. Maybe if they hugged hard enough, Francis would be OK?

After a minute, Diane released their hug and knelt in front of them. She wiped the tears from her eyes with her sleeve. She was still wearing her apron; it smelled like fresh bread. That smell would always remind Billy of this moment. He didn’t think he could eat any of her bread again.

“We need to talk about your brother, Franci… Frank,” Diane said, shooting a glance to Charles.

“We know,” Ali said, wanting to spare their mother the agony. “We…um…heard some of the doctors talking. We know everything.”

“Then all we can do is head back home,” she said as she stood.

“No!” Billy protested, standing up straight.

“No?” their father wondered, surprised at the defiance.

“No, we have to see him! We have to see our brother!”

“I don’t think that would be a very good idea, sweetheart.” Diane said in her most reassuring voice.

“Billy is right, we have to see him,” Ali said firmly.

“No!” barked their father. “He’s gone. We’ll never get our boy back. Let’s go home.”

“No!” The twins cried in unison.

“Charles, you have to let them see him,” said the mother in a reassuring voice. She placed a gentle hand on his arm and squeezed it ever so slightly. “He’s their brother, too.”

The father sighed and nodded his head almost imperceptibly. This triggered the twins to run off down the hall and to room twelve.

Francis was lying on the bed with an IV in each arm. A sensor was glued to his head, a series of small lights blinking in some kind of unknown pattern. An array of instruments surrounded his bed showing traces of brainwave activity, blood pressure, nerve activity…blinking multicolored sentinels guarding the unconscious boy.

The twins walked up to their brother and looked down on him. He had his eyes open, as if awake, the pupils darting back and forth in some unseen dream. They noticed that their brother’s eyes no longer had a white part surrounding his green eyes. The whites were now blue, as were his fingernails.

“Look at his eyes,” Ali said, her voice trembled in fear.

“Yeah, I know, you see the blue?” Billy asked, his voice low, as if he were afraid to wake his older brother. Nothing will wake him now, he thought to himself, his sister nodded, hearing the thought in his mind with her Gift.

Billy walked to the side of the bed and moved up close to his older brother. A tear slowly ran down his cheek as he remembered the time his brother first showed him how to ride his hover board. Billy had fallen five times before he figured out the balance. Moving his hand to his chin, he rubbed the scar that he still had from the last fall. He remembered his brother reaching down and putting his hand on his as he lay in the street crying, blood seeping from the wounded chin.

Don’t worry, little brother, I’ll always be here to pick you up, and bring you back when you’re lost. I won’t ever let go, you can always count on that, Francis had said to him that day.

The memory burned in his mind as more tears flowed from his eyes.

“I guess you won’t be able to pick me up anymore, Francis,” Billy said, another tear dripped off his scarred chin.

He could feel his brother’s mind with his Gift, could feel the battle that was raging within. Francis was lost in the storm of Voices, lost in the darkness. No, Francis couldn’t help Billy anymore, but Billy could help him. He put his hand on top of his brothers and squeezed it. In that instant, Billy could hear the Voices that surged within his brother, a cacophony of voices all contending with each other, all trying to reach out to Francis. They suddenly grew silent when they sensed Billy. He could almost see all their faces turning toward him, their eyes questioning. Then their voices started up, every one trying to speak to him all at once, all competing. The voices were overpowering within his mind, almost overwhelming his sanity. He threw up a psychic barrier with his Gift, an imaginary wall of plas-steel, impenetrable, limitless. And the voices stopped.

Billy released his brother’s hand and stepped back, shaking. His sister quickly ran to him.

“What’s wrong Billy? What is it?”

“The Voices,…I… heard them,” he stammered.

“What do you mean?” his sister asked.

“Go over and hold his hand, but let go right away,” Billy explained.

Ali moved to the other side of the bed and grabbed her brother’s hand. As soon as she grasped his blue-nailed hand, she released it, as if shocked.

“Did you hear ‘em?” Billy asked.

“Yeah, right away. What are they?”

“It must be some effect from the blue algae,” Billy explained. “After all, look at his eyes and fingernails; the algae is inside him. It must be doing this to him…The Voices.”

“How terrible! How can he survive?”

Billy became quiet and looked to the ground. His silence was a loud answer to her question; no one survived it. They had heard what the doctor said, eventually Francis would give up; this was a death sentence. Billy and Ali both knew this, as did their parents outside in the waiting room.

“We can’t let him die,” Ali said, a bit of defiance in her voice. Billy knew this tone, and knew where this was going.

“What can we do? Tell the algae to go away? The doctors have already tried to get it out of his system, but they couldn’t.”

“I don’t care. He’s our brother, we have to do something.” Ali crossed the room and stood next to Billy, moving her mouth so that it was right next to his ear. “We can use our Gifts, somehow,” she whispered.

Billy pulled away from her quickly.

“Are you insane? We took a chance earlier, in the waiting room, but we weren’t using very much power. To help Francis now, we’ll have to use everything we have. Do you know what would happen if we were caught? You remember the Inquisitor outside the bakery? What if some of them were nearby?”

Billy watched Ali close her eyes. He felt her reach out for her Gift, focus it tightly then listened, stretching out her mind to touch those in the hospital, on the street outside. The Inquisitors had a feel about them, they’d both felt it over the years. They were always angry and violent, hating those around them as if they were less than bugs. Their Gifts felt spiky and harsh, like so many rusty needles, yearning for flesh to gouge, lives to destroy. They always pounded away with their Gifts at those around them, like a submarine’s sonar, sifting through the masses, looking for the Gifted to capture and hurt. She felt none.

“It’s ok, there aren’t any of them nearby,” she said.

“I know…I listened, too.”

“Besides, I don’t think getting captured would be any worse than living with the fact that we just stood by and watched Francis waste away and die. I think we can help.”

“How?” asked Billy.

“You remember the flour?”

“Of course, I’m still finding it in my hair and ears.” Billy answered, smiling at the memory. His smile faded when he looked down at his brother’s suffering. “How will that help?”

“We create a bubble around us as we get into Francis’ mind. We try to shield him from the voices, while at the same time shielding ourselves.” She paused to let her plan sink into her brother then continued. “I think we can do it. We have to try.”

Billy looked down at his brother. His eyes were open wide and darting about, as if out of control. His entire face was tensed, every muscle convulsing on its own, teeth clenched together with lips drawn back. He was in agony.

“You’re right, we have to try,” Billy said calmly, having accepted his fate. “Do you know how to make the shell?”

“Of course,” she answered smugly. “Once I see a thing, I can do a thing.”

“OK, once we get inside, we have to move fast. Have you ever gone into another person’s mind before?”

“No, have you?”

“Yeah, a couple of times,” he answered as he moved to Francis’ side, gesturing Ali to move to the other side of the bed. “We’ll see all of his memories, all of his hopes and dreams. You have to ignore those and focus on getting to the core of his mind, to where his true self is located. That’s what we have to protect.”

“How will we know when we’re at his true self?” she asked, her voice showed uncertainty.

“We’ll know… Are you ready?”

“I’m scared now.”

“Me too,” Billy said, his voice shaking, “but you’re right, we’re his only hope.”

“How do I do it?” Ali asked, her voice now shaking.

“When you touch him, extend your Gift into his mind, like you’re trying to listen to his thoughts, but instead of just listening, keep pushing forward with your Gift, until you’re all the way in. You’ll sense it, as soon as you start to enter, then it’ll be easy.” He paused to look at his sister, now fear was starting to show on her face, probably his as well. “Let’s do it, but Ali, this is dangerous. You could get lost in there, and who knows what the Voices will do when we get into Francis’ mind. We have to be careful.”

“OK,” Ali said, her voice shaking a little more. “Ready?”

“Yep…on three. One…two…three!”