Kinetics: In Search of Willow (13 page)

We were probably being stupid. I was
probably being a massive idiot just thinking I could save her. But
at this point in time, I didn't know how hard the next few days and
weeks would be.

It was nearing dawn. We had spent the
better part of the night planning. Harry had picked my brain clean
of all the information I could remember about my father's
workplace.

I had even gone so far as to draw a
messy map of the route we had taken in and out.

We were going to break into my dad's
workplace and raid the bank of computers I had seen. Surely they
would have tons of information about the Isiroan named Grey. I
could still see his greasy hair and face in my mind. I refused to
forget it for the rest of my life.

As I said goodbye, I hesitated to ask
about how wise it was to try and break into a facility with people
who had who-knows-what powers, but kept my mouth shut. If Harry was
half as smart as he was in school and a tenth as smart as he was
acting now, then I had to hope that he knew what he was getting us
into because I certainly didn't.

***

The next night, Harry had brought
along a small toolset, and once we reached my dad's office, he
seemed fairly confident that he could crack open the door. With
Harry working away at the lock on the door, I kept a lookout for
any wandering eyes. Having been here only once, I wasn't sure what
to expect, but when Harry clapped his hands and the door popped
open, I set my worries to rest.

We slipped in the door, letting it
close behind us with a soft click. We made quick ground after that.
I worked us through the halls until we found the room where all the
monitors were laid out. Up at the front of the room there were only
a few people at computers. One looked half asleep at his
monitor.

Harry motioned for me to follow him
and we snuck around the back of the room until we were hidden
behind a bank of computers and a huge black board.

He sat himself in front of a computer
and started opening files and programs.

Harry typed quickly and within moments
had what looked like intelligence reports. Harry's keywords of
Isiro, Grey and Willow Patterson pulled up a dozen or so pages of
something. Harry pushed his flash drive into the computer and was
saving report after report, picture after picture.

What little I was seeing was enough to
make me feel sick. Someone had been tailing Willow. They had
distant, grainy photos of her walking to school, talking to
teachers or classmates, myself and Harry included, even some of her
with her parents at dinner.

How Grey fit into all this wasn't
clear to me yet. Harry kept going. He was getting into stuff that I
didn't recognize from an over the shoulder glance.

Harry pulled the flash drive out and
nodded to me. We began working our way out of the room. But it was
not to be without trouble.

"Hey!" someone in an Alliance uniform
shouted from down the line of computers.

"Shit!" Harry ducked down and pulled
me down with him.

"Stop! Come out!"

We crawled along the floor, barely
avoiding being seen a second time.

"Run!" Harry hissed, shot from his
hiding spot, and sprinted toward the door.

I tried to go after him but my shirt
caught on a chair and I fell down. I saw the back of Harry's head
disappear behind a corner and then adults in black and tan uniforms
closed in around me.

I jerked away from the chair and ran
toward the door, dodging around the grasping fingers of the people
in uniform. My fingers brushed the door handle seconds before
something sharp seared through my brain. I tumbled to the floor and
grabbed my temples. "Ahhg!"

For a brief moment the image of a set
of angry hazel eyes flashed before me but was gone before I even
realized it was there.

My nose met hard carpet and tears
leaked out my eyes. My brain was shuddering with what felt like
shards of glass. I felt like the inside of my head was
bleeding.

I took one look up, just in time to
see the man that had stood at Lancaster's back, Carmichael,
stepping toward me, and everything went dark.

***

Joseph Carmichael looked down at the
boy lying on the floor. His body twitched as if it couldn't come to
terms with unconsciousness. Carmichael leaned and touched two
fingers to the top of the boy's head. He felt the synapses of the
child firing in a confused dance. It was unusual to say the least,
most people would be completely down by now.

This boy was fighting it.

Carmichael stepped away and motioned
to two guards outside the door. "Take him to..."

"Sir!" one of the guards pointed at
the boy.

Carmichael looked back and saw the boy
push himself to his feet. Carmichael readied his powers to strike
the boy down again, that is until he saw the boy's eyes. The whites
were bloodshot and the pupils were fully dilated. Sweat poured down
the boy's forehead and he breathed roughly.

Carmichael could feel power rising
from somewhere in the boy's mind. A wild and ferocious
power.

“
You will stop now,” the
boy said, but his voice was strange. It sounded mixed with a
woman’s voice.

He wasn't prepared for the boy's next
move. A jolt of fire blasted past his face and he barely moved out
of the way.

Carmichael reached out and tried to
take command of the boy again, but his mind was closed tighter than
the jaws of a pit bull.

Flames manifested all around the boy
in a swirling tornado, charring everything in the hallway. The two
guards took positions on either side of Carmichael and wielded
their powers. The first one tried to tie the boy in metal vines
from the water pipes in the floor. The other was making shields
around the boy to prevent his wielded fires from attacking
them.

This seemed to anger the boy even
more.

The furious flames filled the
circumference of the guard's shield and then exploded outward,
dousing everyone in fire.

At the last minute Carmichael used all
his strength of will and shut the boy's brain down into a coma that
would last for hours.

The boy fell to the ground, completely
still this time, but his handiwork of fire still ate at the
walls.

Miriam Lancaster came up behind him
and stared down at the boy. "No Vunjika could do that. Find out who
trained him."

CHAPTER 10

"Three hundred years ago a
prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his
cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long
imprisonment: 'It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience
with which we bear adversity."
 -
James Keller

My body was on fire. My skin burned as
my muscles felt like they tried to eat their way through my skin. I
rolled over and fell out of a hard cot and onto a cold floor. I
scrambled up and rubbed my limbs of the prickling sensation. It
hurt like nothing I had ever felt before. What had that guy done to
me?

"Rubbing it won't help." A voice close
to my ear chuckled.

I fell backward while trying to turn
around. A bent over old man grinned down at me, his teeth cracked
and broken, and his nose was crooked as if he'd been punched in the
face one too many times. He chuckled once again and limped over to
a small metal desk and chair off to the side. I looked around and
tried to anchor down reality. The cell--that's what it obviously
was--was made entirely of metal, interspersed with large rounded
off bolts in vertical lines like bars through the walls. The only
door in the room was flat against the wall with not enough space in
the frame to fit a credit card. How they opened it was beyond
me.

Harry was nowhere to be
seen.

"The feeling will pass in time. Not to
worry." The old man returned and leaned over me. He patted my chest
and I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I clutched at the area that he
touched and tried to take deep breaths.

"What did you do to me?"

I looked up at the man, but he was
back at the desk flipping through some sheets of paper.

"Who are you?" I gasped.

He didn't answer me but came and knelt
at my side. He touched my chest again and I felt a searing pain
near my heart. The old man sucked in a deep breath and clenched his
fist, pulling his arm back like he was about to strike. Instead I
saw a bright light at my chest and from it a little metallic ball
the size of a golf ball emerged. I gasped as the pain subsided and
the little ball fell out onto the floor.

"It's been there for a good bit, yes?"
The old man smiled and plucked it from the floor. He stood and
studied it for a moment. I didn't take the time to ponder this
because suddenly my limbs were burning again. I curled up into a
little ball and rested my forehead on the cool floor. My chest, my
arms, my legs--they all hurt so much. I felt water slide down my
face, but I couldn't tell if it was sweat or tears. Maybe it was
both.

The pain subsided and I gained enough
energy to sit myself back up. The old man was crouched in front of
me still studying the little ball. After a few minutes he dropped
it in my lap. With aching arms and fingers I picked it up and
studied the little metallic ball. It was split into sections and
each of the sections moved. The ball was not a smooth sphere. It
had triangles and square knobs on each subsection of the ball. Even
with my nonexistent powers, I could feel a strange energy pulsating
from it, causing the nerves in my hand to buzz.

I used my fingernail to move a couple
of the sections around and it clicked, with each section
moving.

"It will help you." The old man said
happily.

"Who… who are you?" I rubbed my arms
more, dropping the ball to my lap again, and massaged the burning
skin.

"Ah, the question of the ages. Who am
I?" He grinned at me, plucking thoughtfully at his short white
beard. "I am a prisoner without keys to free myself. A prisoner to
life. A prisoner to my own choices."

His cryptic words sailed over my head
and I couldn't help but stare at him, confused.

"Ah, but you are young, what would you
know of such things." He let out a belly laugh and sat all the way
down on the floor, crossing his legs. "My name is Benjamin Sujit
Ashwater. Father of two. Grandfather of three. Isiroan
Technologist. Enemy to all things Alliance." He laughed with his
last sentence, apparently highly amused with himself.

Isiroan Technologist? This old man,
this Ashwater, was an Isiroan?

"Why am I here?"

"Why are we all here?" I almost
expected him to start saying cryptic things again, but he merely
smiled and looked up at the ceiling dreamily. "We all have done
something another believes that we should not have. You have
ignored rules that are to be kept, I stole something important.
Your next question will be 'where are we,' hmm?"

I nodded, staring at the man across
the room.

"We are still in Ohio, United States,
Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, and the Universe." His constant
grin never faltered. "The real question is?"

I never got that question, because a
split second later I was staring up at the ceiling again feeling my
body spasming out of control. I felt my lungs contract and expand
roughly and my heart beat like a jackhammer inside my chest. I
cried out involuntarily and could do nothing but flail helplessly
when the old man came to sit on his knees at my side. He grabbed
the sides of my head in an unyielding grip. It was almost
impossible in my mind that this old man could possess such
strength. But I had little time, or patience, with my fevered brain
to consider it. I felt my body calm as though a stream of ice water
were flowing from my temples down every vein in my body, stretching
through my arms and fingers and all the way down to my toes. It
felt good for only a moment, because in the next second I was
freezing. My blood felt like ice. I grasped out at Ashwater's arm
as he held me down and saw how unnaturally blue my skin had
become.