Kinetics: In Search of Willow (24 page)

"He wakes sometimes. But he does not
know who he is, or where he is," the nurse was saying to us as
Harry and I stood over his bed.

"His father comes to visit every
couple weeks to check on him, but I'm afraid that there is little
hope of recovery."

"What about Healers?" Harry
asked.

The nurse, like the vast majority of
the town was an Isiroan, and Harry took the opportunity to ask
questions that would seem strange to most Non-Kinetics.

"I'm afraid that Healers can only fix
the body. The mind is a battlefield that none have been able to
conquer. And his injuries are on a very mental level," the nurse
shook her head sadly.

"How did it happen?" I
asked.

"The rumors say that he got into a
fight with a Kinetic who could rip a person's mind
apart."

"Jeez." I let out a breath. Harry and
I exchanged a glance.

"When you're done, sign out on the
register, will you?" The nurse smiled at us both and left, closing
the door behind her.

We sat in a couple chairs and looked
at the man who had been in an on-and-off coma for close to ten
years. The nurse couldn't tell us much about Grey's visit here;
only that it was much like all the other visits he made. But with
the red-haired girl in tow, the visit had been strange and
morose.

"I wonder who did this to him?" Harry
asked after a few minutes of silence.

"I don't know. But the fact that
there's a Kinetic out there who can do this to someone... It's kind
of scary." I replied. "Wouldn't want to get on their bad
side."

Harry reached out and touched the
man's wrist. "I guess his visit here had nothing to do with Willow,
but still, it raises the question why he would bring her
nonetheless."

I shook my head.

"I really don't think there's anything
for us here, Eugene. Grey has a son who can't tell us anything and
this town is a viper pit if they find out why you're chasing after
him." Harry stood up, nervously.

"Yeah." I shook my head and we turned
to leave. I looked back once more at the man, and for a brief
moment I thought I saw his eyes open.

We decided to spend one more night
with Josephine and Theo before heading to the next place, a town
called Hooverville in New Mexico.

I opened my phone and began pressing
numbers before thinking about what number I was dialing.

It rang and instead of Nick's voice I
heard my mother's voice. I gasped and looked at the number I had
dialed. I had called home.

"Hello?"
 she said
again.

I didn't dare say anything, but
suddenly there was a constriction in my throat.

"Hello? Eugene? Is that
you?"

It hurt to not say anything, I
couldn't. I bit my lip.

"Eugene, baby, I love you.
Please come home. We're not mad, we just want you
safe..."

I clicked the phone closed and buried
the heels of my hands into my eyes.

Once I felt like I could talk without
wavering, I dialed Nick's number.

"Hey, Eugene."

"Hey, Nick. Just wanted to let you
know we are in Quinn."

I told him about meeting Josephine and
Theo and about Grey's son.

"What's the son's
name?"

"Rainey Sheng Grey."

"Huh. Feel bad for the
guy."

"Yeah."

"I'll research it and see
if I can find anything. Though I'm beginning to have a disturbing
idea about why Grey's been taking Willow on this
journey."

"Why?"

"That guy you visited? The
guy in St. Louis."

"Yeah."

"His name's Timothy Frank.
He's a Kinetic who has affiliations with a group called the
Corpus."

"What are they?"

"Not entirely sure. Very
secretive group, but they are known for playing very decisive parts
in national and global conflicts. The last time the Corpus showed
up was about a year or two before Thomas Reddinger was
killed."

"Reddinger? Remind me who that is
again.”

“
The old Alliance
Chief."

“
Oh, the guy who was
before Lancaster?”

"Yup. The Corpus
apparently had something to do with the end of the last Great
Kinetic War. What I'm finding is that they probably had a great
deal of influence in ending the war, and the fact that so few
people know about them… well it's like having a shadow group behind
the scenes."

"I see. And this old guy was part of
them?"

"Yeah, but we have no
records on their members or anything. There's no telling who or
what he was to the group, or even Marcus Grey."

"I almost feel like I've jumped in too
deep," I laughed.

"You are in too deep. But
hey, you can always turn back."

"I suppose," I said, but I knew there
was no turning back now. I wouldn't let myself.

"Listen, I'm going to do
some research on Grey's son. Call me back when you get to
Hooverville."

"Will do."

I hung up the phone and sat outside,
staring at the dark sky, full of bright stars. 'In too deep' was
right. Here I was, a newly minted Alliance member, neck deep in an
Isiroan town. Harry was handling it well. I could hear him inside
now joking around with Theo. The man was apparently an avid reader
and had a library in an extra room. Harry was soaking up as much
information about Kinetics from the "Isiroan Perspective" as he
could.

I joined them inside and briefly let
myself be part of the jokes and conversation. Tomorrow we would be
off again into another long journey to yet another town, the last
before Marcus Grey had gone to Laramie and disappeared with Willow
in tow.

I woke up with a start at something
moving outside the guest room, where Harry and I were splayed out
on couches.

I could see through the open door a
light coming from the kitchen, and I could hear a single voice
talking. I pushed up off the couch and peered through the door.
Theo was standing in the kitchen with a phone in his
hands.

"No record of these boys at all. …
Yes. … Yes. … I think so. I even checked it against what we have
from the Alliance. Still nothing, but at this point I'm sure they
are fake IDs. … Yes, they were asking after Marcus
Grey."

I wasn't sure who he was talking to,
but it didn't sound good for us. I rushed over and shook Harry
awake.

I shushed his protests and dragged him
to the door where we heard the tail end of Theo having someone come
pick us up for questioning.

"Just wipe their memories if nothing
is suspicious and no one is the wiser," Theo said, and then said
good bye to the person on the other side.

He headed toward the room where we
were, and Harry pushed me back to my couch and rushed to his.
Taking the hint, we faked asleep. I tried to regulate my rapid
breathing, and when I was sure he was gone to his and Josephine's
room, I rolled off the couch and quickly changed. Harry stuffed our
things in our bags and within minutes we were out the
door.

"Over here," Harry whispered and
dangled Josephine's car keys in my face.

"Oh, no, not again." I stopped in my
tracks.

"We have no choice. Do you want them
to find out who we are?"

"N
.
..no."

"Let's go, then." He waved for me to
follow him.

Harry got in the driver's seat and put
it into neutral. We pushed the car a whole block before Harry felt
like we were okay to start driving.

Harry didn't stop driving except to
put some gas in. We used up the last of our money on it, but Harry
said we just had to bite the bullet. The drive across Oklahoma was
a lonely one. Sure there was traffic, and sure Harry and I were in
the car together, but we barely uttered a word in between the
abject silences. The radio in Josephine's car didn't work, so each
mile marker was passed with quiet concentration. Despite all we had
done since leaving Columbus, I still didn't really know a lot about
Harry.

But despite how much I felt the
curiosity rising, I kept my mouth shut. Part of me was still wary
about making him any more than just help on this
journey.

So instead of talking to him, I opened
my pack and looked through all the reading materials that Nick had
sent along. Packed between two folders was the book that the guy in
St. Louis had given me. Harry had already read through his multiple
times, but I had yet to touch the one he had given me.

I pulled it out.

The Future of the Alliance
by Thomas Reddinger

There is something to be
said about an organization such as ours that has managed to survive
from the earliest annals of history to modern day. We have survived
multiple wars, fracturing conflicts, poor decision makers, and many
internal battles. The fight with Isiro alone has not sustained us
as an organization but rather our struggle with our identity as a
people in a world where we are merely myth and
superstition.

I flipped a few pages.

I do not see how we can
continue on the course that we have maintained. The fractured
nature of our relationship with other groups of Kinetics does not
bode well for a future where we as humans can exist. If it is
indeed true that Isiro is here to raise an army to, what one
scholar put succinctly, 'bring into being the first great galactic
empire' with Kinetic humans as its power force, then we will not be
able to fight it with what few kinetics we have spread across so
many allegiances.

I flipped a few more.

We will never truly be
able to enter the future until we can understand and respect our
past.

I sighed and closed the book. Why in
the world would that guy give me this book? I put it back in my
pack and looked around at our surroundings. It was late morning a
day after we had left Quinn and we were already reaching the border
of Oklahoma and Texas.

"Once we get to Amarillo, we have to
head south into Lubbock," Harry supplied. I pulled out the map and
looked at what he was talking about.

"Hooverville is in New Mexico though,
right? Why aren't we headed straight in?"

"It's southwest of a town called
Artesia."

I looked at the map but didn't see
Hooverville anywhere near Artesia. "Where?"

"It's not on any official maps. Look
at the map Nick gave us."

I pulled out Nick's map and compared
the roads and towns.

"Neither the town nor the road are
even on the regular maps."

"Yeah. I guess they don't want any
tourists."

"Tourists?"

"Yeah, look, it's not that far from
Roswell."

The drive through Amarillo was
uneventful. We stopped for a bit and tried to find some way to get
some food and gas. Harry was continuing to surprise me with his
resourcefulness. What would have taken me a whole day to do he was
doing in a matter of hours. He not only got us a full tank of gas
an hour into Amarillo, but before we left, he got some lady to buy
us some food enough for the journey through Lubbock and then on
into Hooverville.

We were smooth sailing after Amarillo.
It seemed nothing could go bad. How wrong I was.

CHAPTER 18

"Entrances are always
better than exits, except when it comes to
death." 
~ Lucia Oberman, a rogue
Neutral who was a key player in the Third Kinetic War.
1829.

We were stopped at a deserted exit
just inside the state line of New Mexico on highway 380. The road
was dark and in the distance we could see a small airport. A plane
or two made its way across the sky, and those were the only sounds
to accompany our naptime. For a while after Harry had fallen asleep
I stared out the window at the stars. How many days had it been
since Willow had been taken? How long did she have until she was
turned into a host for Isiro?