Risk

Hello readers! This is an excerpt of my fist book "Risk!" I thank you greatly for taking the time to read this and bringing me closer to my dream. If you like what you have read, please take a second to check out "Risk" by Alexis Ferguson on Amazon.com It will be greatly appreciated!

http://www.amazon.com/Risk-Alexis-Ferguson/dp/1493...

Keep Dreaming! And without further adeau, "Risk".

Prologue

It’s not true, is it?

My body started to tremble, causing the table to shake slightly. Ayden, my little brother, and I sat around our little coffee table in the middle of our living room, listening to what our mother had to tell us.

“Your father, he . . . he’s not . . . he is not dead.” Not . . . dead.

What did she mean Dad wasn’t dead? I saw it − the funeral, the burial. I was there for all of that. Not just me, but her too!

Dad is dead. The man that raised me up, took care of me, taught me all I knew and how to live with what I am − the man that I spent half of my life thinking was six feet underground in the soil of the earth is dead . . . isn’t he?

I’m sorry, I heard in the whisper of Mom’s thoughts.

My head was spinning. I tried to sort through my jumbled thoughts, but I couldn’t focus. I barely could have heard the words she was saying.

“He never wanted me to tell you both this. He wanted to keep it a secret to keep you both safe, but I realized it was not right to keep this from you. I’m sorry I waited so long, though I wanted to tell you separately, since Ayden’s only twelve,” she hesitated. He’ll have to know sometime.

What was she talking about?

“But it’s better to get this out of the way now . . . Jade, are you listening?”

I couldn’t speak, nor could I shift my eyes from staring at the wall to look at her, so I just nodded.

9

10Alexis Ferguson

I didn’t want to believe, to hold on to what may be false hope, but the idea was so tempting. Dad . . . alive . . . here . . . with us.

But he was not here.

He left so suddenly with hardly an explanation.

“I’ve been doing some thinking . . . a lot of thinking, actually,” Mom continued, her voice taking on a hint of depression.

One glance and my heart dropped. The expression on my mother’s face was utterly heart wrenching. I didn’t want to see her like that. My hand reached out to her, but she didn’t see it. What would cause her to have such an expression now?

With a deep breath she composed her features, her face now showing little emotion.

“This might sound strange, but your father is alive. He’s just not here.” In the silence my thoughts automatically wanted to humor her words. I could not suppress the urge.

Where was he then, if he was alive? Was he on some secret mission, one that calls for lying to his family and abandoning them, leaving them to mourn for him while he runs off? He was never one to tell anybody anything about himself or his affairs; but could he not tell us, his family?

Or did he run off with someone else, someone who was like us, and not human like Mom?

I shook my head violently and tried to force my attention to the coffee table before me.

Dad was too . . . good; he left for a good reason, I believed that. Maybe Dad was dead, and Mom’s just in denial.

“What are you talking about, Mom?” Ayden asked, stopping my train of thought from returning to impossible things, “What do you mean Dad’s not dead?” I don’t get it.

He was not the least bit fazed by this news. Not a surprise, since he didn’t really know Dad as long as I did − didn’t get to love him as much as I did.

Dad “died” when he was only three, not long after his birthday too. Ayden doesn’t remember him much, nor does he know who, or what, we are − at least not exactly, not yet.

Ayden was very . . . smart, always drawing the right conclusions and finding the right answers to everything that interested him. It didn’t take him long to figure out that there had been something “wrong” with me since a year ago, or even a while before that; but when he did, it became our little secret, or at least I made it our little secret. He caught on to how I somehow seemed to know what he was thinking at times, but so far, the thought of me having the ability to read minds had not crossed his mind, not yet. I would have known.

Risk11

Mom told me I had to be the one who explains all of who we are to him when he turns sixteen − explain all the sudden changes he’d be going through, since I was the only one present who understood.

I internally sighed.

There was a long pause. Mom didn’t want to answer Ayden’s question. “Mom,” Ayden pressed, “what do you mean Dad’s−”

“I mean what I say,” Mom interrupted him. “Your father is not dead. At least, not yet . . .”

The sound of glass shattering filled my mind. “What?” I choked out, my eyes wide as I stared at her.

Not yet!? Was she trying to make us, or me, angry? Because she was doing a very solid job. Right, give me false hope that my father is alive, somewhere, only to tell me that he might be dead as we thought, in a matter of months, days even?

Might as well have kept her mouth shut. My stare turned into a glare. I turned to Ayden and locked eyes with him.

Jade? What’s going on?

I flinched, like I always did when I heard thoughts directed right at me. I still had to work on getting used to the ability.

I swallowed; my throat was dry. I couldn’t answer him even if I wanted to. I didn’t know either.

I shook my head slowly, giving him a look to let him know I was sorry. Mom sighed and began to stare through the living room window at the sun in the sky. The hum of her thoughts was drawing me to focus on them, but I resisted. I wanted to hear the words come out of her mouth.

I took a deep breath and calmed down, a little.

“Spit it out, Mom,” I snapped, not caring for a polite tone of voice. I was tired of waiting, jumping to conclusions with no evidence. “If he’s not dead, then what? Where is my father? Why did he leave? Did he . . .”

My voice came out louder than intended. It cracked and wavered and then went silent. Tears found their way down to my chin. I couldn’t speak anymore, but I asked enough of what needed to be answered.

Mom blinked, dazed, as if snapping back into reality.

“Calm down Jade, it’s not what you think,” Mom said calmly, not the least bothered by my outburst.

“It’s not what I think?” I shouted, standing up from under the table, my voice reaching a pitch that I never knew possible for me. Like she knew what I thought.

I was angry, mostly at the situation, but not at her. She probably knew that too, seeing that she was not responding to my shouting as she usually did.

“So what? If Dad is not dead, then what? Did he just . . . leave us? Leave you? Is he going about his own business, leaving us here to live on

12Alexis Ferguson

our own? Leaving me responsible for Ayden when he−” I stopped, Mom shooting me a look that could silence a crowd. Ayden looked at us both, confused, but I wasn’t going any further on what I said, or almost said, right then. Not when we’re talking about this.

“No,” Mom spoke slowly, “it’s nothing like that, and I’m sorry you feel that way about this,” she said, looking nervously at Ayden, who was still confused about this whole situation, “But it’s not what you think. Yes, your father is alive. Yes, he did leave, but for none of the reasons you’re thinking of. He left to go to your world.”

Our world?

Does she mean that world? ‘Mahgiria’, was it?

What was he doing there?

“Well, he didn’t exactly leave to go to your world, more like he ended up there. You remember the year that your father . . . left,” Mom started hesitantly, “how he told you that he was going on a ‘business-adventure trip’? And how, that same year, half of California suffered from massive explosions and fires? Well . . . your father, for some reason, was the cause of all that, and at this moment, he is in jail in your world, suffering the penalties for his actions.”

What!

She had to be joking! No! Not my dad. He swore he would never abuse his powers like that.

We were told that Dad died in a freak rock-climbing accident when he went away. He could have never stayed in one place − always looking to see, explore, and do new things − so it didn’t sound out of the ordinary for him to have died in such a way. Though I imagined he would have been a lot tougher than to die such a way, but I accepted it. I always scolded him about being so reckless.

“Business-adventure trip,” how did I ever believe that crap? I cried my eyes out over nothing.

That year, when thousands died because of a “freak occurrence” . . .

that was caused by my father?

I couldn’t believe it . . . but . . . why would Mom make up such a thing? It would have been much better for us to believe he was dead if this wasn’t true.

Dad, destroying almost an entire state?

My mind racked at the thought. I couldn’t swallow it . . .

But what other explanation was there?

The news told us that something went wrong at some factory and caused massive explosions and fires in the California area, but the stories never made sense. How could one factory do so much damage was what I thought.

Risk13

Now that I remember, for some reason, the coverage done on the incident seemed patchy. Holes were in the stories they were telling us, and they were always short, concise, maybe even rushed, like they were hiding something. But I was a kid, what did I know?

It did seem strange when we heard that only a few minutes after the incident, major earthquakes and storms passed over the state. Again, no feasible explanations.

The news of Dad’s “death” came shortly after.

I stood there, speechless, the light-yellow walls of this large house suddenly confining. I could have hardly breathed. My throat was dry and sticking together as I tried to swallow.

Maybe . . .

“Do you know . . . why he may have done it?” I whispered, my head hung down. “May have done it” − I still couldn’t fully believe what Mom was saying. Why would he cause such destruction?

But the lines that were blurry for such a long time were slowly becoming a little clearer.

Yet how could I blame my father of such cruelty?

The more I thought, the clearer things got. No matter how much I would have liked to believe the opposite, my father had committed crimes of murder and destruction. But the question still remained, why? There was a reason, whether good or bad, why he did what he did.

“No, I don’t know why,” she admitted, “but for whatever reasons he may have had, the punishment he is getting now is his own fault.” Mom did not have the least bit of compassion or pity in her voice.

I looked up at her, anger flaring as my eyes went wild. The look on my face must have shown how I felt; she flinched and looked to the floor, away from my glare. She looked regretful.

How could she say that? How was she not in the least bit sorrowful? Her husband, who loved her more than anything, was in jail this very moment. She must have felt a little grief.

I looked away from her in an effort to calm myself. How could she not feel how I felt?

The room remained silent. Mom was finished with speaking to us, I could tell, even though she was still sitting in the couch before us.

She sat there looking out the window again, off into the setting sun. What was she thinking telling us this all of a sudden? Pulling me and Ayden into the living room only seconds after we arrived home from school to tell us not only is our father not dead, but alive and waiting to be killed because of the crime he committed.

“Wait, I still don’t understand,” Ayden said, confused, breaking the silence between us. “Where is Dad?”

14Alexis Ferguson

Uh-oh.

Mom and I at the same time turned to Ayden and then to each other. All this time, we hadn’t been fully considering the fact that Ayden was

sitting right beside us and knew nothing of our world, and Dad wanted to keep it that way until he was sixteen, when his powers would come in − an apparent result of being a Mahgi-human hybrid.

“He’s . . .” Mom started, looking at me, telepathically urging me to say something.

My eyes got warmer as I focused fully on hearing her.

You’re going to have to lie to him, sweetie.

“He’s . . . somewhere you’re too young to know about right now.” That was the best I could have come up with, and judging by Mom’s sigh, and Ayden continuing to question us, it wasn’t exactly enough.

“Listen, Ayden−” I interrupted his interrogation, ready to tell him anything he wanted to hear just to get him to shut up, but Mom stopped me.

“I’m sorry, Ayden, but my intention when starting this conversation with you was to stop this lie we have been living for so long. I may not have all the answers, but this is more truth than what you knew before. I’m sorry you can’t know all of the truth yet, but soon, I promise.”

She smiled at him apologetically, waving for him to get up and come beside her. She hugged him, patted his head and kissed him on the cheek, to which he made a face, but it was gone in the same second that it had appeared.

“Now go upstairs and do your homework.”

Reluctantly, he nodded. He gave us both suspicious looks, but he didn’t move.

He stared me right in the eyes.

You’re gonna give me some answers, he thought, or more like demanded.He headed up to his room. He just couldn’t give up, could he? Just like me, just like Dad.

Mom got up and began to walk to the kitchen, but I wasn’t finished with

her.

I couldn’t do what she apparently wanted me to − to sit here and act like everything was normal, as if what she said shouldn’t matter or change anything. She doesn’t know what happens in those cells, none of us do, but I was not about to stand here and let Dad be executed. If neither she nor I knew the reason for his crime, then I was sure that somebody else did.

“How do you know that Dad may die soon?” I asked, curious, but also with a hint of accusation in my voice.

She stopped. I could tell without reading her mind that for whatever reason, she was choosing her words very carefully.

“I . . . visited him.”

Risk15

Visited him . . . saw him . . .

“Visited him!?” I shrieked, “When? How? You saw Dad? You went to that world and visited him!”

The room was silent; again, she was picking her words.

“Yes,” she confessed, “but I am not allowed to tell anyone how and why. And you, young lady, are not allowed to go.”

What!

She spoke as if her words were final, and I knew she wanted to speak no more on this topic, but there was no way I was letting her go, not after all she had said and done.

“Who says?” I challenged. I, out of everyone in this family, should have been the most eligible to go to my world to visit my newly undead father. I was of that world, even if I had never been there before.

“I say!” she threatened, turning around to look me dead in the eye, “You are forbidden to enter Mahgiria, young lady! And before you start your complaining, you should know it is for your own good. If the High Council knew of either of your existences, you and your brother would be executed without hesitation! You being stronger than them, you’d be seen as a threat to both humans and your people. Your father as well, and Ayden eventually.”

Abruptly, her voice changed to a whisper, and she looked away, “We broke the agreement, Jade, having the two of you. We lived our lives with great caution in order to keep you and your brother a secret from the High Council and the Higher Up, and now that they know the extent of your father’s power, what makes you think they would spare your lives if they knew of you?”

I took a step back, speechless. We were illegal? When were we supposed to know that? It seemed quite relevant. If I were to anger the Higher Up . . . I didn’t even know. No one angers the Higher Up.

Another thing she said − “stronger”. Why were we stronger?

I shook my head, trying to focus on what didn’t make the most sense out of what she said.

“Protecting us.” Even after this whole situation, they still had to protect us. Why? Wouldn’t such be already useless? By now they should have already known about us, illegal or not. We weren’t exactly hiding under a rock.

So to her knowledge, they don’t know about us yet? But our people have mind readers, like me, and memory stealers, lie detectors who find out information from the lowest of criminals − how could they not know about us yet?

. . . Maybe, just maybe, somewhere in Dad’s heart, assuming that the rest of it may be bad, was some good, enough to want to protect us, that he would use all the strength he has to somehow keep the existence of us out of his head − to shield those guys out of his mind.

16Alexis Ferguson

Could he do that?

It was the only thing I could have seen stopping them from knowing of us and coming for us.

She waited there for my answer, but I stayed silent. Slowly, she turned back and continued toward the kitchen.

“What was this for?” I muttered under my breath harshly, knowing she could hear me, causing her to halt. “Telling us this, what do you want me to do now?”

Again, another pause.

“Nothing.” She sighed, “Your father wanted me to keep this a secret from you both, but I wanted you to know the truth.”

“Why didn’t you keep it a secret? You know I can’t . . .” I stopped, but not before my voice cracked. She stood there waiting for me to continue, but I couldn’t. She already knew what I was going to say.

You can, and you will.

Her strong and authoritative thoughts toward me caused me to waver slightly. The anger in her thoughts caused my body to heat, but I stood firm on my ground, and I motioned for her to go.

I was left standing in the silent yellow room, alone. I had to think. Slowly, I headed upstairs toward my room, opening the door to a place that, for some reason, suddenly felt foreign to me. I lied on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Baby-blue walls chilled my body as I lied there, still. Thinking, but not really. The decision was already made.

What she said didn’t faze me. I couldn’t sit there knowing that Dad might be killed for a reason unknown, at least unknown to me, in a matter of . . . who knows when? I loved my father, and I knew it was selfish, but I was not going to let him die when I did not know the true reason behind all this, not again.

I didn’t even know that visits were allowed in that world by humans, especially with that new law which stated that no more Mahgi were able to visit Earth. Mom had told me about that. She had connections with someone in the Higher Up; they knew about her and Dad, but obviously not us.

But now that I knew I could go, I couldn’t sit still; I had to go. I had to see him somehow and bring him back to us, to Mom − bring him back so that Ayden could have the father he deserved.

I had to save him . . . I would have liked to save him . . . but the better part of me knew that was probably impossible; the risk would be too great. I didn’t even know how that place looked; how could I expect to be able to bust out a criminal? I would visit him . . .

And as a result of that, I would be risking losing all of the things I loved . . . my life, my friends, my family, my . . .

I didn’t want to think of the last one − the greatest sacrifice.

Risk17

I made no plans, but I knew that I was going. I didn’t know how, but I could have figured that out later.

My powers should be all I needed to go to Mahgiria, I assumed. I could have tried to go there now if I wanted, of course, not letting my mother know, but the pain in my chest made me know that I couldn’t leave without telling . . . Payge.

The thought burned in my mind, and my eyes began to water. I sniffed, trying to blink the tears away.

What would he think? Of course, he would be against it; he was always so protective of me, even though he knows I am much stronger than he is. He loves me. I love him, which made my decision even more heartbreakingly difficult.

My mind was a blur, filled with unanswered questions and undefined decisions.

I knew my actions would be rash, but even after Mother told me all of the consequences, I still wanted to go. Why?

Because . . . I loved him, and I still do. I would hate to think I could’ve done something but didn’t.

I had to try. Even if it caused me my life, I had to try.

-

I hadn’t realized I was crying.

I woke up to a strange sound echoing in the darkness of my room. Piercing, blood curling; it was only when I ran out of oxygen in my lungs that I realized I was screaming.

Water soaked my lashes as I stared at my ceiling, slowly unclenching my fists. The images of my dream replayed in my head.

The pain I had suppressed. The pain I went through years of depression to rid myself of.

In my dream my life was shown to me: Love, happiness, joy, death, darkness, hope. All in that order.